he bairn's boots!" said the woman sharply; "but I
think thou art."

She left me, went to the door, took Gentles' pipe from his mouth, and
then thrust the boots under his arm, laying a great hand upon his
shoulder directly after, and seeming to lead him to a door behind me,
through which she pushed him, with an order to make haste.

"Yes," she said, tightening her lips, and smiling, as she nodded to me,
"I'm mester here, and they hev to mind. Was it thou as set the big trap
ketched my mester by the leg?"

I never felt more taken aback in my life; but I spoke out boldly, and
said that it was I.

"And sarve him right. Be a lesson to him. Mixing himself up wi' such
business. I towd him if he crep into people's places o' neets, when he
owt to hev been fast asleep i' bed wi' his wife and bairns, he must
reckon on being ketched like a rat. I'd like to knock some o' their
heads together, I would. They're allus feitin' agen the mesters, and
generally for nowt, and it's ooz as has to suffer."

Mrs Gentles had told me to try and sleep, and she meant well; but there
were two things which, had I been so disposed, would thoroughly have
prevented it, and they were the dread of Gentles doing something to be
revenged upon me, and his wife's tongue.

For she went on chattering away to me in the most confidential manner,
busying herself all the time in brushing my dusty jacket on a very white
three-legged table, after giving the cloth a preliminary beating
outside.

"There," she said, hanging it on a chair; "by and by you shall get up
and brush your hair, and I'll give you a brush down, and then with clean
boots you will not be so very much the worse."

She then sat down to some needlework, stitching away busily, and giving
me all sorts of information about her family--how she had two boys out
at work at Bandy's, taking it for granted that I knew who Bandy's were;
that she had her eldest girl in service, and the next helping her aunt
Betsey, and the other four were at school.

All of which was, no doubt, very interesting to her; but the only part
that took my attention was about her two boys, who had, I knew, from
what I overheard, been in the pack that had so cruelly hunted me down.

And all this while I could hear the slow _brush, brush_ at my boots,
evidently outside the back-door, and I half expected to have them
brought back ripped, or with something sharp inside to injure me when I
put them on.

At last, after Mr