him than to go, as Insie had said to him
at least a score of times, and mind his own business, and shake off the
dust--or the mud--of his feet at such strangers? But, alas! he had
tried it, and could shake nothing, except his sad and sapient head. How
deplorably was he altered from the Pet that used to be! Where were
now his lofty joys, the pleasure he found in wholesome mischief and
wholesale destruction, the high delight of frightening all the world
about his safety?

"There are people here, I do believe," he said to himself, most
touchingly, "who would be quite happy to chop off my head!"

As if to give edge to so murderous a thought, and wings to the feet of
the thinker, a man both tall and broad came striding down the cottage
garden. He was swinging a heavy axe as if it were a mere dress cane, and
now and then dealing clean slash of a branch, with an air which made Pet
shiver worse than any wind. The poor lad saw that in the grasp of such
a man he could offer less resistance than a nut within the crackers, and
even his champion, the sturdy Jordas, might struggle without much avail.
He gathered in his legs, and tucked his head well under the gorse to
watch him.

"Surely he is too big to run very fast," thought the boy, with his valor
evaporated; "it must be that horrible Maunder. What a blessing that I
stopped up here just in time! He is going up the gill to cleave some
wood. Shall I cut away at once, or lie flat upon my stomach? He would
be sure to see me if I tried to run away; and much he would care for his
landlord!"

In such a choice of evils, poor Lancelot resolved to lie still, unless
the monster should turn his steps that way. And presently he had the
heart-felt pleasure of seeing the formidable stranger take the track
that followed the windings of the brook. But instead of going well away,
and rounding the next corner, the big man stopped at the very spot where
Insie used to fill her pitcher, pulled off his coat and hung it on a
bush, and began with mighty strokes to fell a dead alder-tree that stood
there. As his great arms swung, and his back rose and fell, and the sway
of his legs seemed to shake the bank, and the ring of his axe filled
the glen with echoes, wrath and terror were fighting a hot battle in the
heart of Lancelot.

His sense of a land-owner's rights and titles had always been most
imperious, and though the Scargate estates were his as yet only in
remainder, he was even more jealous abo