“Well, Crayshaw, and what do you want?” said Dick, pausing in his walk.
The old man gazed up at him with bleared and red eyes.
“You’ve got over it, and I’m glad,” he remarked.
“Got over it! Got over what? What do you mean, my good fellow?”
“It’s nigh upon the blessed Christmas, the birth of Christ, and I want to unburden my soul. I listened when I ought not.”
“I saw you, Sir Richard, that night you went down into the vault, the night the child was buried. I saw you, and what’s more, I heard you. You was ter’ble upset. For a man who had just come in for a title and a lot of money, you was upset past natural. Yes, yes. I saw it and I heard, and I want to unburden my soul now. You was ter’ble upset, Sir Richard.”
“Where did you say you were?” he asked after a pause.
“Just ahint the old yew tree. Oh, I never told, never except once, and that to an old woman, a strange old body who didn’t know these parts. She come here a month back. I told her and she was ter’ble interested. It was wonderful for a man like you to go right down into the vault, and then to groan. Your groans down there was enough to turn a body’s head. I won’t deny that the frights didn’t take hold of me, for they did, and I run home with my hands to my ears and trusting that none of the sperrits of the dead and gone Pelhams would come after me. But you’re better now, you’re all right now. You has accepted your riches in a thankful sperrit, and that’s as it ought to be.”
“Yes, things are as they ought to be,” said Pelham after a pause. “See, here, Crayshaw, don’t talk about this matter. I will own that I was much upset that time. Here’s a sovereign for you. You understand what I mean, Crayshaw—keep your own counsel.”
“A word to the wise is allers enough,” mumbled the old man out of his almost toothless gums. He clutched hold of the sovereign and slipped it into his pocket. As he hobbled away he said to himself—
“Seems to me this ’ere secret of mine is going to become valuable. I got a shilling from that old woman, and here’s a sovrin now from the guv’nor. I’ll make use of this secret seems to me.”
He hobbled away to find the nearest public-house, in order to spend a portion of the money. As he sipped his mug of beer he nodded mysteriously to his companions and told them that he had suddenly discovered a little mine of gold, but he did not tell them what it was; he only excited their curiosity to a considerable extent.