clear his throat for
reply.

"We're old folks, most on us, miss, 'cept Mrs. Hurd. We don't hear talk
o' things now like as we did when we were younger. If you ast Mr. Harden
he'll tell you, I dessay."

Patton allowed himself an inward chuckle. Even Mrs. Jellison, he
thought, must admit that he knew a thing or two as to the best way of
dealing with the gentry.

But Marcella fixed him with her bright frank eyes.

"I had rather ask in the village," she said. "If you don't know how it
is now, Mr. Patton, tell me how it used to be when you were young. Was
the preserving very strict about here? Were there often fights, with the
keepers--long ago?--in my grandfather's days?--and do you think men
poached because they were hungry, or because they wanted sport?"

Patton looked at her fixedly a moment undecided, then her strong
nervous youth seemed to exercise a kind of compulsion on him; perhaps,
too, the pretty courtesy of her manner. He cleared his throat again, and
tried to forget Mrs. Jellison, who would be sure to let him hear of it
again, whatever he said.

"Well, I can't answer for 'em, miss, I'm sure, but if you ast _me_, I
b'lieve ther's a bit o' boath in it. Yer see it's not in human natur,
when a man's young and 's got his blood up, as he shouldn't want ter
have 'is sport with the wild creeturs. Perhaps he see 'em when ee's
going to the wood with a wood cart--or he cooms across 'em in the
turnips--wounded birds, you understan', miss, perhaps the day after the
gentry 'as been bangin' at 'em all day. An' ee don't see, not for the
life of 'im, why ee shouldn't have 'em. Ther's bin lots an' lots for the
rich folks, an' he don't see why _ee_ shouldn't have a few arter they've
enjoyed theirselves. And mebbe he's eleven shillin' a week--an'
two-threy little chillen--you understan', miss?"

"Of course I understand!" said Marcella, eagerly, her dark cheek
flushing. "Of course I do! But there's a good deal of game given away in
these parts, isn't there? I know Lord Maxwell does, and they say Lord
Winterbourne gives all his labourers rabbits, almost as many as they
want."

Her questions wound old Patton up as though he had been a disused clock.
He began to feel a whirr among his creaking wheels, a shaking of all his
rusty mind.

"Perhaps they do, miss," he said, and his wife saw that he was beginning
to tremble. "I dessay they do--I don't say nothink agen it--though
theer's none of it cooms my way. But that isn't all