idn't she know it? Was she there to preach to them? Only Hurd must
promise not to do it any more, for his wife's sake.

And he--stammering--left without excuse or resource, either against her
charge, or the work she offered him--had promised her, and promised her,
moreover--in his trepidation--with more fervency than he at all liked
to remember.

For about a fortnight, perhaps, he had gone to the Court by day, and had
kept indoors by night. Then, just as the vagabond passions, the Celtic
instincts, so long repressed, so lately roused, were goading at him
again, he met Westall in the road--Westall, who looked him over from top
to toe with an insolent smile, as much as to say, "Well, my man, we've
got the whip hand of you now!" That same night he crept out again in the
dark and the early morning, in spite of all Minta's tears and scolding.

Well, what matter? As towards the rich and the law, he had the morals of
the slave, who does not feel that he has had any part in making the
rules he is expected to keep, and breaks them when he can with glee. It
made him uncomfortable, certainly, that Miss Boyce should come in and
out of their place as she did, should be teaching Willie to read, and
bringing her old dresses to make up for Daisy and Nellie, while he was
making a fool of her in this way. Still he took it all as it came. One
sensation wiped out another.

Besides, Miss Boyce had, after all, much part in this double life of
his. Whenever he was at home, sitting over the fire with a pipe, he read
those papers and things she had brought him in the summer. He had not
taken much notice of them at first. Now he spelled them out again and
again. He had always thought "them rich people took advantage of yer."
But he had never supposed, somehow, they were such thieves, such mean
thieves, as it appeared, they were. A curious ferment filled his
restless, inconsequent brain. The poor were downtrodden, but they were
coming to their rights. The land and its creatures were for the people!
not for the idle rich. Above all, Westall was a devil, and must be put
down. For the rest, if he could have given words to experience, he would
have said that since he began to go out poaching he had burst his prison
and found himself. A life which was not merely endurance pulsed in him.
The scent of the night woods, the keenness of the night air, the tracks
and ways of the wild creatures, the wiles by which he slew them, the
talents and charms of h