frugal supper;
"it's that precious belly-ache porridge that's a-giving you all the
'flensy. Tip it down the sink, dame, will you now? and trust to me for
better. Your Tom here, Roger, 's a lad o' mettle, that he is; ay, and
that old iron o' yours as true as a compass; and the pheasants would
come to it, all the same as if they'd been loadstoned. Here, dame, pluck
the fowl, will you: drop 'em, Tom."--And Thomas Acton flung upon the
table a couple of fine cock-pheasants.

Roger, Mary, and Grace, who were well accustomed to Ben Burke's eloquent
tirades, heard the end of this one with anxiety and silence; for Tom
had never done the like before. Grace was first to expostulate, but was
at once cut short by an oath from her brother, whose evident state of
high excitement could not brook the semblance of reproof. Mary Acton's
marketing glance was abstractedly fixed upon the actual _corpus
delicti_; each fine plump bird, full-plumaged, young-spurred; yes, they
were still warm, and would eat tender, so she mechanically began to
pluck them; while, as for poor downcast Roger, he remembered, with a
conscience-sting that almost made him start, his stolen bit of money in
the morning--so, how could he condemn? He only looked pityingly on
Thomas, and sighed from the bottom of his heart.

"Why, what's the matter now?" roared Ben; "one 'ud think we was bailiffs
come to raise the rent, 'stead of son Tom and friendly Ben; hang it,
mun, we aint here to cheat you out o' summut--no, not out o' peace o'
mind neither; so, if you don't like luck, burn the fowls, or bury 'em,
and let brave Tom risk limbo for nothing."

"Oh, Ben!" murmured Grace, "why will you lead him astray? Oh, brother!
brother! what have you done?" she said, sorrowfully.

"Miss Grace,"--her beauty always awed the poacher, and his rugged
Caliban spirit bowed in reverence before her Ariel soul--"I wish I was
as good as you, but can't be: don't condemn us, Grace; leastways, first
hear me, and then say where's the harm or sin on it. Twelve hundred head
o' game--I heard John Gorse, the keeper, tell it at the Jerry--twelve
hundred head were shot at t'other day's battew: Sir John--no blame to
him for it--killed a couple o' hundred to his own gun: and though they
sent away a coachful, and gave to all who asked, and feasted themselves
chuckfull, and fed the cats, and all, still a mound, like a haycock, o'
them fine fat fowl, rotted in a mass, and were flung upon the dungpit.
Now, Mi