"Well, I don't much care; the kitchen seems more natural. It is here that we used to sit before the young master found out how well-favored you are, as if he couldn't find comely faces enough at the house, but must come poaching down here on my warren."
"Who are you speaking of? I cannot make it out," faltered Ruth, turning cold.
"Who? As if you didn't know well enough; as if I didn't see you and him talking together thick as two bees this very morning."
"No, no!" protested Ruth, throwing out both her hands. "You could not—you did not!"
"But I did, though, and the gun just trembled of itself in my hand, it so wanted to be at him. If it hadn't been that you seemed offish, and he looked black as a thunder-clap, I couldn't have kept my hand from the trigger."
"That would have been murder," whispered the girl, through her white lips.
"Murder, would it? That's according as one thinks. What do men carry a gun at night for, let me ask you, but to keep the deer and the birds safe from poachers? If they catch them at it, haven't they a right to fire? Well, Ruth, you are my game, and my gun takes care of you as keepers protect the deer. It will be safe to warn the young master of that!"
"I do not know—I cannot understand—"
"Oh, you don't, ha!" broke in the young man, throwing himself into a chair and stretching out his legs on the hearth. "Well, then, I'll tell you a secret about him that'll take the starch out of your pride. You're not the only girl with a pretty face that brings him among my covers!"
"What?"