lf, which would never be denied for
long, began to examine him, as to his proposed night's work. This
precious task, which he was so proud of going through with, on
the score of which he had been in his heart crowing over others,
because they had not taken it on them, or had let it drop, what
then was the meaning of it?

"What was he out there for? What had he come out to do?" They
were awkward questions. He tried several answers and was driven
from one to another till he was bound to admit that he was out
there that night partly out of pique, and partly out of pride;
and that his object (next to earning the pleasure of thinking
himself a better man than his neighbours) was, if so be, to catch
a poacher. "To catch a poacher? What business had he to be
catching poachers? If all poachers were to be caught, he would
have to be caught himself." He had just had an unpleasant
reminder of this fact from him of the heather mixture--a Parthian
remark which he had thrown over his shoulder as he went off, and
which had stuck. "But then," Tom argued, "it was a very different
thing, his poaching--going out for a day's lark after game, which
he didn't care a straw for, but only for the sport--and that of
men making a trade of it, like the man the keeper spoke of."
"Why? How different? If there were any difference, was it one in
his favour?" Avoiding this suggestion, he took up new ground,
"Poachers were always the greatest blackguards in their
neighbourhoods, pests of society, and ought to be put down."
"Possibly--at any rate he had been one of the fraternity in his
time, and was scarcely the man to be casting stones at them."
"But his poaching had always been done thoughtlessly. How did he
know that others had worse motives?"

And so he went on, tossing the matter backwards and forwards in
his mind, and getting more and more uncomfortable, and unable to
answer to his own satisfaction the simple question, "What right
have you to be out here on this errand?"

He got up a second time and walked up and down, but with no
better success than before. The change of position, and exercise,
did not help him out of his difficulties. And now he got a step
further. If he had no right to be there, hadn't he better go up
to the house and say so, and go to bed like the rest? No, his
pride couldn't stand that. But if he couldn't go in, he might
turn in to a barn or outhouse, nobody would be any the wiser
then, and after all he was not pledged