the further side
was the landlord's, as they had now to remember; and as, when the brook
was at its lowest, their pigs and goats were by no means likely to
recollect; though Steadfast was extremely anxious to give no occasion
for the mistrust and ill-will with which Pierce regarded him, as a
squatter, trespasser, and poacher, almost as a matter of course, and
likewise a prelatist and plotter.

Once he did find a kid on the wrong side, standing on a rock, browsing
a honeysuckle, and was about either to seize it or shoot it, as it went
off in three bounds, when Emlyn darted out, and threw herself between.
It was her darling kid, it should never trespass again, she would--she
would thank him ever more--if he would spare it this once.

And Emlyn as usual had touched the soft place in the heart of even a
woodward. He told her not to cry, and contented himself with growling a
tremendous warning to Steadfast and Patience.

There were several breezes about Growler, who was only too apt to use
his liberty in pursuing rabbits on the wrong side, and whom Peter more
than once condemned; but Emlyn and Ben begged him off, and he was kept
well chained up. At last, however, he won even the woodward's favour by
the slaughter of a terrible wild cat and her brood, after all Peter's
dogs had returned with bleeding faces from the combat.

The woodward had another soft place in his heart. He had a pretty young
wife and a little son. Nanny Pierce was older in years, but far more
childish than Patience, and the life in this gulley seemed to her utter
solitude and desolation, and if Patience had been ten times a poacher
and a prelatist, she could not have helped making friends with the only
creature of her own kind within a mile. And when Patience's experience
with Ben and other older babes at rest in the churchyard, had aided the
poor little helpless woman through a convulsion fit of her baby's before
Goody Grace could arrive, Peter himself owned that "the Kenton wench
was good for somewhat," though he continued to think Steadfast's great
carefulness not to transgress, only a further proof that "he was a deep
one"--all the more because he refused to let anyone but himself have a
search for a vanished polecat in "them holes," which Peter was persuaded
contained some mystery, though Steadfast laid it, and not untruly, on
the health of the young stock he kept penned in the caves, which were
all, he hoped, of which Peter was aware.

All this