e was going upwards and out of our lot, beginning to
mix with different people and get different notions--not but what he was
always kind and friendly in his way to Aileen and mother, and would have
been to us if he'd ever seen us. But all his new friends were different
kind of people, and after a bit, Aileen said, we'd only be remembered as
people he'd known when he was young, and soon, when the old lady died,
we'd be asked into the kitchen and not into the parlour. Aileen used to
laugh when she talked like this, and say she'd come and see George when
he'd married a lady, and what fun it would be to remind Gracey of the
time they threshed the oats out together at Rocky Flat. But still,
laugh and all, I could see, though she talked that way, it made her feel
wretched all the while, because she couldn't help thinking that we ought
to have done just as well as George, and might have been nigh-hand as
far forward if we'd kept straight. If we'd only kept straight! Ah, there
was where the whole mistake lay.

It often seems to me as if men and women ought to have two lives--an old
one and a new one--one to repent of the other; the first one to show
men what they ought to keep clear of in the second. When you think how
foolish-like and childish man or woman commits their first fault, not so
bad in itself, but enough often to shut them out from nearly all their
chances of good in this world, it does seem hardish that one life should
end all under the sun. Of course, there's the other, and we don't know
what's coming, but there's so many different notions about that a chap
like me gets puzzled, and looks on it as out of his line altogether.

We weren't sorry to have a little excuse to stop quiet at home for this
month. We couldn't have done no good by mooching about, and ten to one,
while the chase was so hot after all that were supposed to have had a
hand in rubbing out Hagan and his lot, we should have been dropped
upon. The whole country was alive with scouting parties, as well as
the regulars. You'd have thought the end of the world was come. Father
couldn't have done a better thing for himself and all of us than get hit
as he did. It kept him and us out of harm's way, and put them off the
scent, while they hunted Moran and Burke and the rest of their lot for
their lives. They could hardly get a bit of damper out of a shepherd's
hut without it being known to the police, and many a time they got off
by the skin of their teeth