Mugford had used towards him, of having betrayed the children
to the witch on the moor. The bare idea that he should have been false
to his mistress and to the children, whom he worshipped, made him
furious; and he went out with the determination of giving Mrs. Mugford
a bit of his mind before night, but, like a wise man, not until he had
thought the matter well over during a solitary walk. So he made his
way through the woods and in due time came to the place where Dick had
pointed out to him the ragged man, whom he had found skulking in the
fern a short time before. Then it flashed across him suddenly that
this man might be the deserter, and he blamed himself for his stupidity
in not thinking of it at first. Once again he racked his brains to
remember where he had seen the man before, for certainly he had seen
him or some one very like him; and with his mind full of Mrs. Mugford
he suddenly recalled her son Henry, who had enlisted for a marine, and
had once come back on sick-leave. The more he thought of it, the more
certain he was that the man whom he had found was Henry Mugford, for
though he had not seen him for some years he had never heard that he
had been discharged. That would account for Mrs. Mugford's anxiety to
keep the Corporal out of the village, and to get the idiot arrested,
for it would probably be some days before a serjeant of Marines could
arrive from Plymouth, or the idiot himself could be sent there, to
decide if he were the deserter Henry Bale or not.
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