o fortunes to be made that I know of, Betsey; besides, I
don't want to get away from St. Eve. I want to stay here and keep my eye
upon Tresidder."

"And what good will that do? You ca'ant 'urt 'ee by stayin' 'ere. 'E's
too clever for you; he c'n allays bait 'ee while you stay 'ere,
especially when you do behave like a maazed noodle."

"Very well, Betsey. I will leave your house," I said after she had been
talking to me in this fashion one day; "I can manage to live somewhere."

"Jasper mus'n't go 'way," said Eli; "Jasper stay with me. Ef Jasper go
'way, I go 'way. I help Jasper. I knaw! I knaw!" and then the poor gnome
caught my hands and laughed in a strange way which was half a cry.

And so, because Betsey loved Eli with a strange love, and because Eli
clung to me with a dog-like devotion, I made Betsey's cottage my home.
Plan after plan did I make whereby I might be able to make Richard
Tresidder and all his family suffer for their behaviour to me, but I saw
no means. What could I do? I had no friends, for when I left Elmwater
Barton William Dawe and his family left the parish. For a long time I
could not make up my mind to ask for work as a common labourer in a
parish where I had been regarded as the owner of a barton. It seemed
beneath me, and my foolish pride, while it did not forbid me to idle
away my days and live in anything but a manly way, forbade me to do
honest manual work. But it would have made no difference even if I had
been less foolish, for when I on one occasion became wiser, and sought
work among the farmers, I was refused on every hand. The fact was, every
one was afraid to offend Richard Tresidder, and as every tenant farmer
in the parish was in his power, perhaps their conduct was reasonable.

And thus it came about that my manhood slipped away from me, and I
became a loafing outcast. I would have left the parish but for a
seemingly unreasonable desire to be near Richard Tresidder, who day by
day I hated more and more. I know I was mad, and forgot what was due to
my name in my madness.

When a year had gone, and I was nearly twenty-one years of age, there
were few more degraded sights in the parish than I. My clothes had
become worn out, and my whole appearance was more that of a savage than
of anything else. People said, too, that the look of a devil shone from
my eyes, and I saw that people avoided me. And as I brooded over this,
and remembered that I owed it all to the Tresidders, I vowed