‘And you look like getting it. I don’t suppose it’s the first time you’ll have picked oakum.’
Abner did not hear these words. He thought only of the shattered heap of flesh that had once been Tiger. He would have gone blindly for the dog’s murderer if he had not suddenly realised that his own case was hopeless. The owner of the gun looked like business, and the labourer was now ready to tackle him from behind. He could do nothing. Mr Cookson, however, having caught a poacher red-handed, didn’t mean to let him go.
‘I’ve had enough of this game,’ he said. ‘You black-country chaps think you can slip over the hills and do what you like . . . you and your dogs. It’s no use turning ugly now. You’ll come along with me to the police station, and that’s all about it. That’s the best ferret I’ve got, worth a dozen of your damned dogs.’
Abner, who saw that it was not worth while arguing and whose anger had now become more subject to his reason, tried to explain once more that he was coming to the house to ask for work.
‘That’s an old tale,’ said Cookson. ‘We’ve had enough talk. Come along! That don’t explain what you were doing in this field.’
The farmer also was now becoming more reasonable. Abner explained that he had taken the field-path on the smith’s advice. ‘If you can’t credit it, you ask him,’ he said. ‘It was the lady at the Barley Mow sent me here and give me your name. That is if your name’s Cookson.’
‘That’s my name right enough,’ said the farmer, ‘and you won’t forget it!’ He began to grumble at the landlady as the prime cause of his losing the ferret. None the less, he now appeared to believe Abner. At the root he was a good-natured man, celebrated for the sudden violence and quick subsidence of his temper.
‘Want work, do you?’ he said. ‘Well, I’ve got no work for you nor no one else, and if you see Mrs Potter again you can tell her so. What that woman wants to do using my name I don’t know. I reckon I’m feeding half Chaddesbourne as it is. Still, I’m ready to believe you. If you take my advice you’ll clear quick before I change my mind. Go on, hook it!’ He put his hand in his pocket and jingled some money as if he were debating whether he should give Abner half a crown.
‘What about my dog?’ said Abner.
Mr Cookson took his hand out of his pocket and his neck flushed. ‘I’ve told you you’d best clear,’ he said. ‘George’ll bury the dog.’ He turned to the labourer. ‘George, you go up to the yard and get a spade.’ He ejected the unused cartridge from his gun and turned his back on Abner, and Abner, still sore with resentment, took his advice and returned to the road.