He was caught by Moss wiring hairs in Bassett's wood, within twenty yards of the place where he had found the babes in the wood so nobly.
Remonstrated with tenderly and solemnly, he informed Sir Charles that poaching was a thing he could not live without, and he modestly asked to have Bassett's wood given him to poach in, offering, as a consideration, to keep all other poachers out: as a greater inducement, he represented that he should not require a house, but only a coarse sheet to stretch across an old saw-pit, and a pair of blankets for winter use—one under, one over.
Sir Charles was often sad, sometimes indignant.
Lady Bassett excused each enormity with pathetic ingenuity; excused, but suffered, and indeed pined visibly, for all this time he was tormenting her as few women in her position have been tormented. Her life was a struggle of contesting emotions; she was wounded, harassed, perplexed, and so miserable, she would have welcomed death, that her husband might read that Manuscript and cease to suffer, and she escape the shame of confessing, and of living after it.
In one word, she was expiating.
Neither the excuses she made nor the misery she suffered escaped Sir Charles.
He said to her at last, “My own Bella, this unhappy boy is killing you. Dear as he is to me, you are dearer. I must send him away again.”
“He saved our darling,” said she, faintly, but she could say no more. He had exhausted excuse.
Sir Charles made inquiries everywhere, and at last his attention was drawn to the following advertisement in the Times:
UNMANAGEABLE, Backward, or other BOYS, carefully TRAINED, and EDUCATED, by a married rector. Home comforts. Moderate terms. Address Dr. Beecher, Fennymore, Cambridgeshire.