ll its weight,' heavily smiting the table with great
force, 'and smash you!'

'Go on,' said Bradley, after moistening his lips.

'O! I'm a going on. Don't you fear but I'll go on full-fast enough for
you, and fur enough for you, without your telling. Look here, Bradley
Headstone, Master. You might have split the T'other governor to chips
and wedges, without my caring, except that I might have come upon you
for a glass or so now and then. Else why have to do with you at all? But
when you copied my clothes, and when you copied my neckhankercher, and
when you shook blood upon me after you had done the trick, you did wot
I'll be paid for and paid heavy for. If it come to be throw'd upon you,
you was to be ready to throw it upon me, was you? Where else but
in Plashwater Weir Mill Lock was there a man dressed according as
described? Where else but in Plashwater Weir Mill Lock was there a
man as had had words with him coming through in his boat? Look at the
Lock-keeper in Plashwater Weir Mill Lock, in them same answering clothes
and with that same answering red neckhankercher, and see whether his
clothes happens to be bloody or not. Yes, they do happen to be bloody.
Ah, you sly devil!'

Bradley, very white, sat looking at him in silence.

'But two could play at your game,' said Riderhood, snapping his fingers
at him half a dozen times, 'and I played it long ago; long afore you
tried your clumsy hand at it; in days when you hadn't begun croaking
your lecters or what not in your school. I know to a figure how you
done it. Where you stole away, I could steal away arter you, and do it
knowinger than you. I know how you come away from London in your own
clothes, and where you changed your clothes, and hid your clothes. I see
you with my own eyes take your own clothes from their hiding-place
among them felled trees, and take a dip in the river to account for
your dressing yourself, to any one as might come by. I see you rise up
Bradley Headstone, Master, where you sat down Bargeman. I see you pitch
your Bargeman's bundle into the river. I hooked your Bargeman's bundle
out of the river. I've got your Bargeman's clothes, tore this way and
that way with the scuffle, stained green with the grass, and spattered
all over with what bust from the blows. I've got them, and I've got you.
I don't care a curse for the T'other governor, alive or dead, but I care
a many curses for my own self. And as you laid your plots agin me and
was a sly