Sir John Slingsby laid his finger upon his temple and thought for a moment. He had been serious for a long while--fully five minutes--and he had some difficulty in keeping up his grave demeanour; but that was not all: some words which Ned Hayward had let fall almost at random, suggested a plan to his mind which he hesitated whether he should adopt or not. Perhaps--though he was a kind-hearted man, as we have seen and said before--he might have rejected it, had it not been for its oddity; but it was an odd plan, and one that jumped with his peculiar humour. He was fond of doing all sorts of things that other men would not do, just because they would not--of trying experiments that they dared not try--of setting at defiance every thing which had only custom and convention for its basis; and, therefore, after an instant's meditation, given to the consideration of whether people would suppose he was actuated by benevolence or eccentricity (he would not have had them think he did an odd thing from benevolence for the world), he went on as the whim prompted to reply to Stephen Gimlet's last words, mingling a high degree of delicacy of feeling with his vagaries, in the strangest manner possible, as the reader will see.
"Well Ste," he said, "perhaps we may make it less of a struggle than you think. I'll tell you what, my fine fellow, you're very fond of game--a little too fond perhaps. Now, my friend, Ned Hayward--that's to say, Captain Hayward. Where the deuce he has gone to?--I don't known--ran after the clumsy fellow, I suppose, who fired through the window and missed the deer too, I'll be bound. It must have been Conolly, the underkeeper; nobody but Conolly would have thought of firing right towards the window--but as I was saying, my friend, Ned Hayward, said just now that you'd make a capital keeper. What do you think of it, Gimlet? Wouldn't it do?"
"Not under Mr. Hearne, Sir," answered Ste Gimlet. "We've had too many squabbles together;" and he shook his head.
"No, no, that would never do," replied Sir John, laughing; "you'd soon have your charges in each other's gizzards. But you know Denman died a week ago, over at the Trottington Hall manor, on t'other side of the common--you know it, you dog--you know it well enough, I can see by the twinkling of your eye. I dare say you have looked into every nest on the manor, since the poor fellow was bagged by the grim archer. Well, but as I was saying, there's the cottage empty and eighteen shillings a week, and you and Hearne can run against each other, and see which will give us the best day's sport at the end of the year. What do you say, Gimlet? you can go and take possession of the cottage this very night; I don't want it to stand empty an hour longer."