"I can tell you where Harborough was between nine o'clock and ten o'clock that night," replied Mrs. Hamthwaite, with a smile that was not devoid of cunning. "I know, if nobody else knows!"
The old woman leaned forward across the hearth.
"Up here on the moor!" she whispered. "Not five minutes' walk from here. At a bit of a place--Miss there'll know it--called Good Folks' Lift. A little rise i' the ground where the fairies used to dance, you know, master."
"I saw him," chuckled Mrs. Hamthwaite. "And if I don't know him, why then, his own daughter doesn't!"
"You'd better tell us all about it," said Brereton.
Mrs. Hamthwaite gave him a sharp look. "I've given evidence to law folks before today," she said. "You'll want to know what I could tell before a judge, like?"
"Well, then----" she continued. "You see, master, since my old man died, I've lived all alone up here. I've a bit to live on--not over much, but enough. All the same, if I can save a bit by getting a hare or a rabbit, or a bird or two now and then, off the moor--well, I do! We all of us does that, as lives on the moor: some folks calls it poaching, but we call it taking our own. Now then, on that night we're talking about, I went along to Good Folks' Lift to look at some snares I'd set early that day. There's a good deal of bush and scrub about that place--I was amongst the bushes when I heard steps, and I looked out and saw a tall man in grey clothes coming close by. How did I know he were in grey clothes? Why, 'cause he stopped close by me to light his pipe! But he'd his back to me, so I didn't see his full face, only a side of it. He were a man with a thin, greyish beard. Well, he walks past there, not far--and then I heard other steps. Then I heard your father's voice, miss--and I see the two of 'em meet. They stood, whispering together, for a minute or so--then they came back past me, and they went off across the moor towards Hexendale. And soon they were out of sight, and when I'd finished what I was after I came my ways home. That's all, master--but if yon old man was killed down in Highmarket Shawl Wood between nine and ten o'clock that night, then Jack Harborough didn't kill him, for Jack was up here at soon after nine, and him and the tall man went away in the opposite direction!"