rdled the Mellor estate on
three sides. And here he came once more across his enemy. For George
Westall was now in the far better-paid service of the Court--and a very
clever keeper, with designs on the head keeper's post whenever it might
be vacant. In the case of a poacher he had the scent of one of his own
hares. It was known to him in an incredibly short time that that "low
caselty fellow Hurd" was attacking "his" game.

Hurd, notwithstanding, was cunning itself, and Westall lay in wait for
him in vain. Meanwhile, all the old hatred between the two men revived.
Hurd drank this winter more than he had ever drunk yet. It was
necessary to keep on good terms with one or two publicans who acted as
"receivers" of the poached game of the neighbourhood. And it seemed to
him that Westall pursued him into these low dens. The keeper--big,
burly, prosperous--would speak to him with insolent patronage, watching
him all the time, or with the old brutality, which Hurd dared not
resent. Only in his excitable dwarf's sense hate grew and throve, very
soon to monstrous proportions. Westall's menacing figure darkened all
his sky for him. His poaching, besides a means of livelihood, became
more and more a silent duel between him and his boyhood's tyrant.

And now, after seven months of regular field-work and respectable
living, it was all to begin again with the new winter! The same shudders
and terrors, the same shames before the gentry and Mr. Harden!--the
soft, timid woman with her conscience could not endure the prospect. For
some weeks after the harvest was over she struggled. He had begun to go
out again at nights. But she drove him to look for employment, and lived
in tears when he failed.

As for him, she knew that he was glad to fail; there was a certain ease
and jauntiness in his air to-night as he stood calling the children:

"Will!--you come in at once! Daisy!--Nellie!"

Two little figures came pattering up the street in the moist October
dusk, a third, panted behind. The girls ran in to their mother
chattering and laughing. Hurd lifted the boy in his arm.

"Where you bin, Will? What were yo out for in this nasty damp? I've
brought yo a whole pocket full o' chestnuts, and summat else too."

He carried him in to the fire and sat him on his knees. The little
emaciated creature, flushed with the pleasure of his father's company,
played contentedly in the intervals of coughing with the shining
chestnuts, or ate his slice