on the shoulder, and the door
shut behind him with a sound that boomed peal after peal of thunder
near and far away, and all round and above, till it rolled off
gradually into silence. It was totally dark, but there was a fanning
of fresh cool air that overpowered him. He felt that he was in the
upper world again.

In a few minutes he began to hear voices which he knew, and first a
faint point of light appeared before his eyes, and gradually he saw
the flame of the candle, and, after that, the familiar faces of his
wife and children, and he heard them faintly when they spoke to him,
although he was as yet unable to answer.

He also saw the doctor, like an isolated figure in the dark, and heard
him say:

"There, now, you have him back. He'll do, I think."

His first words, when he could speak and saw clearly all about him,
and felt the blood on his neck and shirt, were:

"Wife, forgie me. I'm a changed man. Send for't sir."

Which last phrase means, "Send for the clergyman."

When the vicar came and entered the little bedroom where the scared
poacher, whose soul had died within him, was lying, still sick and
weak, in his bed, and with a spirit that was prostrate with terror,
Tom Chuff feebly beckoned the rest from the room, and, the door being
closed, the good parson heard the strange confession, and with equal
amazement the man's earnest and agitated vows of amendment, and his
helpless appeals to him for support and counsel.

These, of course, were kindly met; and the visits of the rector, for
some time, were frequent.

One day, when he took Tom Chuff's hand on bidding him good-bye, the
sick man held it still, and said:

"Ye'r vicar o' Shackleton, sir, and if I sud dee, ye'll promise me a'e
thing, as I a promised ye a many. I a said I'll never gie wife, nor
barn, nor folk o' no sort, skelp nor sizzup more, and ye'll know o' me
no more among the sipers. Nor never will Tom draw trigger, nor set a
snare again, but in an honest way, and after that ye'll no make it a
bootless bene for me, but bein', as I say, vicar o' Shackleton, and
able to do as ye list, ye'll no let them bury me within twenty good
yerd-wands measure o' the a'd beech trees that's round the churchyard
of Shackleton."

"I see; you would have your grave, when your time really comes, a good
way from the place where lay the grave you dreamed of."

"That's jest it. I'd lie at the bottom o' a marl-pit liefer! And I'd
be laid in anither churchyard