Dick! Then that man’s name was Richard Knutton!
“Only one—young Dick. He enlisted, and was killed in Afghanistan.”
“Yes, sir,” he answered, more at his ease.
“Your family is a very old one in this neighbourhood, isn’t it?”
“One o’ the oldest, they says. The Knuttons lived at the Manor Farm up at Caldecott for more’n a hundred years. But we’ve come down in the world since then.”
“The Manor Farm is the one attached to the Manor of Caldecott, eh?”
“It’s close to Caldecott Manor House. There’s fifteen hundred acres o’ land with it. And nowadays, sir, I often works on that self-same land for Mr. Banks, what owns it now.”
“No, sir, Dick was. I was the second. Dick was the lucky ’un, and was old Mr. Banks’ foreman for years; that was in the present Mr. Banks’ father’s time, when farmin’ was a lot better than what it is now. Lor’, sir, in this district three-quarters of the farms scarcely pay their rents. All the landlords ought to be generous like the Duke o’ Bedford; but they ain’t, and we labourers have to suffer.”
“More work and less beer,” I remarked, with a laugh.
“Well, sir, when you mention beer, I’d be pleased to drink a pint at your expense.” A remark which showed the rustic cadger.
“And so you shall when we’ve finished our talk,” I said. “Tell me, have you ever heard or known of any person called Wollerton?”
“Wollerton!” he repeated. “Why, now that I remember, that’s the very question the gentleman asked me the day before yesterday.”
“A gentleman I met in the Sonde Arms. He said he knew me, but I didn’t remember ever having set eyes on him before. He treated me and then asked me a whole lot of questions, some of ’em very similar to what you’ve asked me. I don’t understand what he or you—beggin’ your pardon, sir—are driving’ at.”
“But this person who was so inquisitive? What kind of man was he?”
“A middle-aged gentleman from London. He stayed the night at the Sonde Arms, and left in the morning. He was a tall, fair man, and funnily enough seemed to know a lot about my relations.”
This fact was certainly strange. Was it possible that some other person was in possession of the secret of the hoard and had forestalled me in making inquiries?
This beery labourer seemed, without doubt, a descendant of the Richard Knutton whose signature was written upon the faded parchment. As guardians of the treasure, the Knuttons had apparently been given the Manor Farm in order to be constantly near the spot where the spoils of war were concealed. Their residence at the farm through generations appeared to show that instructions had passed from father to son, and had, until seventy years ago, been strictly observed. Then the family had fallen upon evil times, and the descendants had degenerated into labourers, the youngest enlisting as a private soldier.