He opened one of the doors, and two Gordon setters and a big black retriever bounded out, to leap up, dance around him, and make efforts, in dog-like fashion, to show their delight and anxiety to be at liberty once more.
“Down, Bess! Down, Juno! Steady, Sandy! Quiet! Good dogs, then,” he cried, as he entered the barn, took a hammer from where it hung, and a nail from a rough shelf, and with the dogs looking on after sniffing at the polecat, as if they took human interest in the proceeding, he nailed the unfortunate, ill-odoured little beast side by side with the last gibbeted offender, a fine old chinchilla-coated grey rat.
“’Most a pity one can’t serve Master Caleb Kent the same. Dunno, though,” he added with a chuckle. “Time was—that was years ago, though, and nobody can’t say I’ve done badly since. But I did hope we’d seen the last of Master Caleb.”
Ben Hayle took off his black felt hat, and gave his dark, grizzled hair a scratch, and his face puckered up as he put away the hammer, to stand thinking.
“No, hang him, he wouldn’t dare!”
Ben walked back to the porch to take up his gun, and a look of pride came to brighten his face, as just then a figure appeared in the porch in the shape of Judith Hayle, a tall, dark-eyed girl of twenty, strikingly like her father, and, as she stood framed in the entrance, she well warranted the keeper’s look of pride.
“Are you going far?”
“’Bout the usual round, my dear. Why, Judy, the place don’t seem to be the same with you back home. But it is dull for you, eh?”
“Dull, father? No,” said the girl laughing.
“Oh, I dunno. After your fine ways up at The Warren with Miss Marjorie and the missus, it must seem a big drop down to be here again.”