"That's him!" Guy exclaimed, with a start, in profound excitement. "That's the fellow, sure enough. I know him. I know him. And where is he now, landlord? Is he in the house? Can I see him?"
"Well, no, 'ee can't zee him, zur," the landlord answered, eyeing the stranger askance; "he be out, jest at present. He do go vur a walk, mostly, down yonner in the bottom alongside the brook. Mebbe if you was to vollow by river-bank you med come up wi' him by-an'-by ... and mebbe, agin, you medn't."
"I'll follow him," Guy exclaimed, growing more excited than ever, now this quarry was almost well within sight; "I'll follow him till I find him, the confounded rascal. I'll follow him to his grave. He shan't get away from me."
The landlord looked at him with a dubious frown. That one could smile and smile and be a villain didn't enter into his simple rustic philosophy.
"He's a pleasant-spoken gentleman is Maister McGregor," the honest Devonian said, with a tinge of disapprobation in his thick voice. "What vur do 'ee want to vind 'un? That's what _I_ wants to know. He don't look like one as did ever hurt a vlea. Such a soft zart of a voice. An' he do play on the viddle that beautiful--that beautiful, why, 'tis the zame if he war a angel from heaven. Viddler Moore, he wur up here wi' his music last night; an' Maister McGregor, he took the instrument vrom un, an' 'Let ME have a try, my vrend,' says he, all modest and unassoomin'; and vi' that, he wounded it up, an' he begun to play. Lard, how he did play. Never heard nothing like it in all my barn days. It is the zame, vor all the world, as you do hear they viddler chaps that plays by themselves in the Albert Hall up to London. Depend upon it, zur, there ain't no harm in HIM. A vullow as can play on the viddle like thik there, why, he couldn't do no hurt, not to child nor chicken."
Guy turned away from the door, fretting and fuming inwardly. He knew better than that. Nevitt's consummate mastery of his chosen instrument was but of a piece, after all, with the way he could play on all the world, as on a familiar gamut. It was the very skill of the man that made him so dangerous and so devilish. Guy felt that under the spell of Nevitt's eye he himself was but as clay in the hands of the potter.