“I be too fond of sport,” he said.
And now he worked at Vitifer Mine on Dartmoor, and was known to be the cleverest poacher in the district.
On coming of age, the youth made his position clear to his parents.
“I don’t think the same as you, father, because I’ve larned my lessons at the Board School, an’ ideas be larger now than they was in your time. I must have my bit o’ sport; an’ when they catches me, ’twill be time enough to pull a long face about it. But this I’ll promise on my oath; that never do I set foot inside Middlecott woods, an’ never will I help any man as does. I’ll not lift a gun against any bird of your raising; but more I won’t say. As to game in general—well, I’ve got my opinions; an’ being a Radical with large ideas about such things, I’ll go my way.”
“Go your way to the gallows,” said Matthew Sweetland. “If I’d knowed what I was breeding you for, I’d have sent you to your uncle the cobbler to London, an’ never taught you one end of a gun from t’other. ’Tis poor payment for a good father’s care to find his only one be an ungrateful toad of a boy, an’ a disgrace to the nation.”
“Sporting will out,” answered Daniel, calmly. “I ban’t a bad sort; an’ I’ll disgrace nobody. I’m a honest, plain dealer—according to my own lights; an’ if I don’t agree with you about the rights of property in wild things like birds an’ fish, an’ a hare now an’ again—well, what of it?”
“’Tis the beginning,” declared his father. “From the day I catched you setting a wire in a hedge unbeknownst to me, I felt that I’d done wrong to let you bide in the country.”
And now Matthew Sweetland’s beer tasted sour as he heard the talk of his neighbours in the bar of the “White Hart.”
A handsome, fair man was speaking. He looked pale for a country dweller, and indeed his business kept him much within doors; for he was a footman at Middlecott Court. His eyes were blue, his face was long, and his features regular. He spoke slowly and with little accent, for he had copied his master’s guests carefully and so mended the local peculiarities of his speech.
“’Tis said without doubt, Sweetland, that the burglars must have been helped by somebody—man or maid—who knew the house and grounds. What did Bartley here think when first he heard about it?”