Wootton's excellent ale.
Here I found the bar-parlour full of local customers, and although a
heated discussion was in progress as I opened the door, silence fell
upon my appearance. Mrs. Wootton greeted me sadly.
"Ah, sir," she said, as she placed a mug before me; "of course you've
heard?"
"I have, madam," I replied, perceiving that she did not know me to be a
guest at Cray's Folly.
"Well, well!" She shook her head. "It had to come, with all these
foreign folk about."
She retired to some sanctum at the rear of the bar, and I drank my beer
amid one of those silences which sometimes descend upon such a
gathering when a stranger appears in its midst. Not until I moved to
depart was this silence broken, then:
"Ah, well," said an old fellow, evidently a farm-hand, "we know now why
he was priming of hisself with the drink, we do."
"Aye!" came a growling chorus.
I came out of the Lavender Arms full of a knowledge that so far as Mid-
Hatton was concerned, Colin Camber was already found guilty.
I had hoped to see something of Val Beverley on my return, but she
remained closeted with Madame de Staemer, and I was left in loneliness
to pursue my own reflections, and to perfect that theory which had
presented itself to my mind.
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