each other's
arms, their heads very rarely out of the water, their backs visible
frequently; until at a boundary fence they vanished from the sight of
attentive pursuers who could pursue no further; and seemed in the
final glimpse as small and black as two otters fiercely fighting.

"Laard's sake," said one of the louts, "I'd 'a' liked to 'a' seen 'em
go over the weir and into the wheel--for 'tis to be, and there's
nought can stop it now."

The event, however, proved otherwise. Before the submerged weir was
reached a kindly branch among the willows, stretching gnarled hands
just above the flood level, gave the ready aid that no louts could
offer. Here Dale contrived to hang until people came from the mill and
fished him and his now unconscious burden out of their hazardous
predicament.

This little incident so stimulated Dale's servants that they began to
work for him quite enthusiastically. It occurred to them that he was
not only a good plucked 'un, but that, however hard his manner, his
heart must possess a big soft spot in it, or he could never have so
"put himself about for a rammucky pot-swilling feller like Abe Veale."

Veale was truly a feckless, good-for-little creature. By trade a
hurdle-maker, he lived in one of the few remaining mud cottages on the
skirts of Hadleigh Upper Wood, and in his hovel he had bred an immense
family. His wife had long since died; her mother, a toothless old
crone, kept house for him and was supposed to look after the younger
children; but generally the Veales and their domestic arrangements
were considered as a survival of a barbaric state of society and a
disgrace in these highly polished modern times. People said that Veale
was half a gipsy, that his boys were growing up as hardy young
poachers, and that every time he got drunk at the Barradine Arms he
would himself produce wire nooses from his pocket, and offer to go out
and snare a pheasant before the morning if anybody would pay for it in
advance by another quart of ale.

Drunk or sober now, he widely advertised a sincere sense of obligation
to his preserver. He bothered Dale with too profuse acknowledgments;
he came to the Vine-Pits kitchen door at all hours; and he would even
stop the red-coated young gentlemen as they rode home from hunting, in
order to supply them with unimpeachable details of all that had
happened. He told the tale with the greatest gusto, and invariably
began and ended in the same manner.

"You s