ied was wrongfully withheld him: and, if he took from the rich, who
scarcely knew he robbed them, he shared his savoury booty with the poor,
and fed them by his daring. Like Robin Hood of old, he avenged himself
on wanton wealth, and frequently redressed by it the wrongs of penury.
Not that I intend to break a lance for either of them, nor to go any
lengths in excusing; slight extenuation is the limit for prudent
advocacy in these cases. Robin Hood and Benjamin Burke were both of them
thieves; bold men--bad men, if any will insist upon the bad; they sinned
against law, and order, and Providence; they dug rudely at the roots of
social institutions; they spoke and acted in a dangerous fashion about
rights of men and community of things. But set aside the statutes of
Foresting and Venery, disfranchise pheasants, let it be a cogent thing
that poverty and riches approach the golden mean somewhat less
unequally, and we shall not find much of criminality, either in Ben or
Robin.

For a general idea, then, of our poaching friend:--he is a gigantic,
black-whiskered, humorous, ruddy mortal, full of strange oaths, which we
really must not print, and bearded like the pard, and he tumbles in
amongst our humble family party, with--

"Bless your honest heart, Roger! what makes you look so sodden? I'm a
lord, if your eyes a'n't as red as a hedge-hog's; and all the rest o'
you, too; why, you seem to be pretty well merry as mutes. Ha! I see what
it is," added Ben, pouring forth a benediction on their frugal supper;
"it's that precious belly-ache porridge that's a-giving you all the
'flensy. Tip it down the sink, dame, will you now? and trust to me for
better. Your Tom here, Roger, 's a lad o' mettle, that he is; ay, and
that old iron o' yours as true as a compass; and the pheasants would
come to it, all the same as if they'd been loadstoned. Here, dame, pluck
the fowl, will you: drop 'em, Tom."--And Thomas Acton flung upon the
table a couple of fine cock-pheasants.

Roger, Mary, and Grace, who were well accustomed to Ben Burke's eloquent
tirades, heard the end of this one with anxiety and silence; for Tom
had never done the like before. Grace was first to expostulate, but was
at once cut short by an oath from her brother, whose evident state of
high excitement could not brook the semblance of reproof. Mary Acton's
marketing glance was abstractedly fixed upon the actual _corpus
delicti_; each fine plump bird, full-plumaged, young-spurre