All that day he expected to hear that the theft had been discovered. The Squire would be sure to remember his pocket-book and where he had put it. However, time passed and nothing happened. It was possible that young Bardon had not yet found out his loss. But Robert felt sure that when, sooner or later, the money was missed, it would be traced to him. He must act quickly. Oh Lord! how he hated having to act quickly! It was now a race between him and fate—and Fate must have smiled....

First of all he had to see Bessie. He could not send her a letter, for she could not read. He must somehow manage to go over to Eggs Hole. He would not tell her how he had come by the ten pounds. A pang went into his heart like a thorn as he realised this, but he felt that if she knew she might refuse to go away with him. He would marry her first, and confess to her afterwards. Perhaps some day they might be able to return the money—meantime he would say that a friend had lent it to him. The thought of this, his first lie to her, hurt him more than the actual theft.

He managed to slip over to Eggs Hole that evening. Albert, whom his father had not treated gently on the day of the choir practice, refused to be his accomplice a second time, but Reuben, thinking his rebellion crushed, kept a less strict watch over him, and took himself off after supper to the Cocks, where he had weighty matters of politics and agriculture to discuss. Robert seized his opportunity, and ran the whole way to Eggs Hole—laid his plans before Bessie—and ran the whole way back again.

Bessie was as surprised as she was delighted to hear that he should suddenly have found a friend to lend him ten pounds—"a feller called Tim Harman, lives[Pg 159] over at Rolvenden," said Robert in a perspiring effort to be convincing. However, it never struck her to doubt his word, and she put down to emotion and hard running all that seemed strange in her sweetheart\'s manner.

Bessie was quicker and more practical than Robert, and between them they evolved a fairly respectable scheme. Next Thursday was Fair Day, and all the Backfield family, including Robert, would be at the Fair. She would meet him in Meridiana the gipsy\'s tent at five—it was right on the outskirts of the Fair, and they could enter separately without attracting attention, on the pretext of having their fortunes told. Then they could easily steal off under cover of dusk. They would go to Wadhurst, where there were many farms—get work together, and marry at once. Meantime Robert was to divert suspicion by his blameless conduct, and find out as well as he could exactly what one did to get married.

On arriving home he was uncertain as to whether it would be more diplomatic to go straight to bed or let his father on his return from the Cocks find him industriously working at the corn accounts. He decided on the latter, and was soon with many groans and lickings of his pencil crediting and debiting Odiam\'s wheat.

Backfield came in about nine, by which time Robert\'s panting had completely subsided and his complexion lost the beetroot shade which might have betrayed his exertions. His father was in a good temper, and over-flowed with the Cocks\' gossip—how Realf had got twenty-five pounds for his heifer at Battle, how the mustard had mixed in with Ticehurst\'s beans and spoilt his crop, how Dunk of Old Turk said he would vote Radical at the next election, and how young Squire Bardon had been robbed of his pocket-book, with certificates for three hundred pounds of Canadian stock and a ten-pound bank-note in it.

Robert bit off the end of his pencil, which his father,[Pg 160] who was looking the other way, luckily did not see. The boy crouched over the fire, trying to hide his trembling, and longing yet not daring to ask a hundred questions. He was glad and at the same time sorry when Reuben having explained to him the right and the wrong way of sowing beans, and enlarged on the wickedness of Radicals in general and Gladstone in particular, returned to Bardon\'s loss.

"Of course he ?un\'t sure as it wur stolen—he may have dropped it. But policeman d?an\'t think that\'s likely."

"Then policeman\'s bin t?ald about it?" came faintly from Robert.

"Surelye! I wur spikking to him over at the Cocks. I said to him as I wur sartain as one of those lousy Workman\'s Institute lads of his had done it. That\'s wot comes of trying to help labourers and ............