"Come your ways in, joy!" she said hospitably. "I was expecting you'd come up tonight: I knew you'd want to have a word with me as soon as you could. Come in and sit you down by the fire--it's coldish o' nights, to be sure, and there's frost in the air.
"This gentleman may come in, too, mayn't he, Mrs. Hamthwaite?" asked Avice as she and Brereton stepped within the porch. "He's the lawyer-gentleman who's defending my father--you won't mind speaking before him, will you?"
"Neither before him, nor behind him, nor yet to him," answered Mrs. Hamthwaite with a chuckle. "I've talked to lawyers afore today, many's the time! Come your ways in, sir--sit you down."
She carefully closed the door on her guests and motioned them to seats by a bright fire of turf, and then setting the lamp on the table, seated herself in a corner of her long-settle and folding her hands in her apron took a long look at her visitors through a pair of unusually large spectacles. And Brereton, genuinely interested, took an equally long look at her; and saw a woman who was obviously very old but whose face was eager, intelligent, and even vivacious. As this queer old face turned from one to the other, its wrinkles smoothed out into a smile.
"You'll be wondering what I've got to tell, love," said Mrs. Hamthwaite, turning to Avice. "And no doubt you want to know why I haven't sent for you before now. But you see, since that affair happened down your way, I been away. Aye, I been to see my daughter--as lives up the coast. And I didn't come home till today. And I'm no hand at writing letters. However here we are, and better late than never and no doubt this lawyer gentleman'll be glad to hear what I can tell him and you."
"Very glad indeed!" responded Brereton. "What is it?"
The old woman turned to a box which stood in a recess in the ingle-nook at her elbow and took from it a folded newspaper.
"Me and my daughter and her husband read this here account o' the case against Harborough as it was put before the magistrates," she said. "We studied it. Now you want to know where Harborough was on the night that old fellow was done away with. That's it, master, what?"
"That is it," answered Brereton, pressing his arm against Avice, who sat close at his side. "Yes, indeed! And you----"