ard. She was far
better born and better educated than her husband. Her father had been a
small master chair-maker in Wycombe, and her mother, a lackadaisical
silly woman, had given her her "fine" name by way of additional proof
that she and her children were something out of the common. Moreover,
she had the conforming law-abiding instincts of the well-treated
domestic servant, who has lived on kindly terms with the gentry and
shared their standards. And for years after their marriage Hurd had
allowed her to govern him. He had been so patient, so hard-working, such
a kind husband and father, so full of a dumb wish to show her he was
grateful to her for marrying such a fellow as he. The quarrel with
Westall seemed to have sunk out of his mind. He never spoke to or of
him. Low wages, the burden of quick-coming children, the bad sanitary
conditions of their wretched cottage, and poor health, had made their
lives one long and sordid struggle. But for years he had borne his load
with extraordinary patience. He and his could just exist, and the man
who had been in youth the lonely victim of his neighbours' scorn had
found a woman to give him all herself and children to love. Hence years
of submission, a hidden flowering time for both of them.

Till that last awful winter!--the winter before Richard Boyce's
succession to Mellor--when the farmers had been mostly ruined, and half
the able-bodied men of Mellor had tramped "up into the smoke," as the
village put it, in search of London work--then, out of actual sheer
starvation--that very rare excuse of the poacher!--Hurd had gone one
night and snared a hare on the Mellor land. Would the wife and mother
ever forget the pure animal satisfaction of that meal, or the fearful
joy of the next night, when he got three shillings from a local publican
for a hare and two rabbits?

But after the first relief Minta had gone in fear and trembling. For the
old woodcraft revived in Hurd, and the old passion for the fields and
their chances which he had felt as a lad before his "watcher's" place
had been made intolerable to him by George Westall's bullying. He became
excited, unmanageable. Very soon he was no longer content with Mellor,
where, since the death of young Harold, the heir, the keepers had been
dismissed, and what remained of a once numerous head of game lay open to
the wiles of all the bold spirits of the neighbourhood. He must needs go
on to those woods of Lord Maxwell's, which gi