r a moment, and, holding his long
chin, stared into the flames. With his deformity, his earth-stains, his
blue eyes, his brown wrinkled skin, and his shock of red hair, he had
the look of some strange gnome crouching there.

"I don't know what you're at, I'll swear," he said after a pause. "I
ain't in any pertickler trouble just now--if yer wouldn't send a fellow
stumpin' the country for nothink. If you'll just let me alone I'll get a
livin' for you and the chillen right enough. Don't you trouble
yourself--an' hold your tongue!"

She threw down her apron with a gesture of despair as she stood beside
him, in front of the fire, watching the pan.

"What am I to do, Jim, an' them chillen--when you're took to prison?"
she asked him vehemently.

"I shan't get took to prison, I tell yer. All the same, Westall got holt
o' me this mornin'. I thought praps you'd better know."

Her exclamation of terror, her wild look at him, were exactly what he
had expected; nevertheless, he flinched before them. His brutality was
mostly assumed. He had adopted it as a mask for more than a year past,
because he _must_ go his way, and she worried him.

"Now look here," he said resolutely, "it don't matter. I'm not goin' to
be took by Westall. I'd kill him or myself first. But he caught me
lookin' at a snare this mornin'--it wor misty, and I didn't see no one
comin'. It wor close to the footpath, and it worn't my snare."

"'Jim, my chap,' says he, mockin', 'I'm sorry for it, but I'm going to
search yer, so take it quietly,' says he. He had young Dynes with
him--so I didn't say nought--I kep' as still as a mouse, an' sure enough
he put his ugly han's into all my pockets. An' what do yer think he
foun'?"

"What?" she said breathlessly.

"Nothink!" he laughed out. "Nary an end o' string, nor a kink o'
wire--nothink. I'd hidden the two rabbits I got las' night, and all my
bits o' things in a ditch far enough out o' his way. I just laughed at
the look ov 'im. 'I'll have the law on yer for assault an' battery, yer
damned miscalculatin' brute!' says I to him--'why don't yer get that boy
there to teach yer your business?' An' off I walked. Don't you be
afeared--'ee'll never lay hands on me!"

But Minta was sore afraid, and went on talking and lamenting while she
made the tea. He took little heed of her. He sat by the fire quivering
and thinking. In a public-house two nights before this one, overtures
had been made to him on behalf of a well-kn