elder man's soul alive. That always delighted Cicely
above everything, and she'd pull a long face and sigh and share Samuel's
fine ambitions, and hope how, between them in the future, they'd make her
father a better member of society than the Trusham gamekeepers thought he
was.

Not that Borlase could honestly say the marks of infamy came out in Mr.
Green's view of life. He showed a wonderful knowledge of wild birds and
beasts and plants even, and abounded in rich tales of poaching adventures,
though he never told 'em as being in his own personal experience. He
declared no quarrel with the law himself, but steadfastly upheld it on
principle. At the same time a joke was a joke, and if a joke turned on
breaking the game laws, or hoodwinking them appointed to uphold right and
justice, Chawner would tell the joke and derive a good deal of
satisfaction from Sam's attitude thereto.

So time passed and near a year was spent, but Chawner dallied to say the
word and let 'em wed; and the crash came on a night in October, when the
policeman suddenly found himself called to night duty by Inspector Chowne.
'Twas a beat along the Trusham covers, and a constable had gone ill, and
the gamekeepers were yowling about the poachers as usual, instead of
catching 'em. So Samuel went his way and looked sharp out for any untoward
sign of his fellow-man, or any unlawful sound from the dark woods, where
Trusham pheasants harboured of a night. He was full of his own thoughts
too, for he wanted cruel to be married, and so did Cicely, and the puzzle
was to get Mr. Green to consent without a rumpus.

Nought but a pair of owls hollering to each other did Samuel hear for a
good bit. The moon was so bright as day, for the hunter's moon it happed
to be at full, and all was silence and peace, with silver light on the
falling leaves and great darkness in spruce and evergreen undergrowth.
'Twas at a gate that Sam suddenly heard a suspicious sound and stood
stock-still. Footsteps he thought he heard 'tother side of a low broken
hedge, where birches grew and the gate opened into a rutted cart-track
through the woods. The sound was made by no wild creature, pattering
four-foot, but the quick tramp of a man, and when Sam stood still the
sound ceased, and when he went forward he reckoned it began again. There
was certainly an evil-doer on the covert side of the hedge, and Borlase
practised guile and pretended as he'd heard nothing and tramped slowly
forward