her; but I crossed the brook, and followed the
Badgery stream, without knowing, or caring to know, where I was. The
banks, and the bushes, and the rushing water went by me until I came
upon--but though the Lord hath made us to endure such things, he hath
not compelled us to enlarge upon them.

In the course of the night kind people came, under the guidance of
Thomas Pring, and they made a pair of wattles such as farmers use for
sheep, and carried home father and daughter, one sobbing and groaning
with a broken heart, and the other that should never so much as sigh
again. Troubles have fallen upon me since, as the will of the Lord is
always; but none that I ever felt like that, and for months everything
was the same to me.

But inasmuch as it has been said by those who should know better,
that my father in some way provoked his merciless end by those vile
barbarians, I will put into plainest form, without any other change,
except from outlandish words, the tale received from Dick Hutchings,
the boy, who had seen and heard almost everything while crouching in the
water and huddled up inside a bush.

"Squire had catched a tidy few, and he seemed well pleased with himself,
and then we came to a sort of a hollow place where one brook floweth
into the other. Here he was a-casting of his fly, most careful, for if
there was ever a trout on the feed, it was like to be a big one, and
lucky for me I was keeping round the corner when a kingfisher bird flew
along like a string-bolt, and there were three great men coming round a
fuzz-bush, and looking at squire, and he back to them. Down goes I, you
may say sure enough, with all of me in the water but my face, and that
stuck into a wutts-clump, and my teeth making holes in my naked knees,
because of the way they were shaking.

"'Ho, fellow!' one of them called out to squire, as if he was no better
than father is, 'who give thee leave to fish in our river?'

"'Open moor,' says squire, 'and belongeth to the king, if it belongeth
to anybody. Any of you gentlemen hold his majesty's warrant to forbid an
old officer of his?'

"That seemed to put them in a dreadful rage, for to talk of a warrant
was unpleasant to them.

"'Good fellow, thou mayest spin spider's webs, or jib up and down like
a gnat,' said one, 'but such tricks are not lawful upon land of ours.
Therefore render up thy spoil.'

"Squire walked up from the pebbles at that, and he stood before the
three of them, as tall