“Yes, Philip,” and the father’s eyes reddened with suffusing tears, “I’m bound to own that I too am something other, and I think, better than I was.”
Philip wisely and prudently said no more, but his soul was full of a yearning love to his mollified and chastened parent and of gratitude to God, who was so evidently leading him by a way he knew not, to a hitherto undiscovered resting-place for intellect and heart.
In the course of the day the squire met his head gamekeeper.
“Well, Hatfield,” said he, “how are you getting on?”
“Why, sir,” said Hatfield, touching his hat, “we don’t seem to have very much to do now. A fortnight or two since, me and my mates were in peril of our lives, and Waverdale Woods were as flush of poachers as they were of game; but they seem to be pretty nearly all gone.”
“Gone? What’s gone? The game?”
“No, sir; the poachers. I haven’t seen a snare set, or heard a gun for three weeks, and the hares that were snared at the beginning of that time we had the pleasure of taking ourselves.”
“I’m very glad to hear it, Hatfield. But how do you account for it?”
“Why, sir, it’s all owing to the Methodist preaching in Midden Harbour. I met Potter Bill the other day, and I said, ‘Why, Bill, you’ve given us no trouble lately.’ He said, ‘No, I ha’nt, an’ what’s mair, ah nivver sall nae mair. God’s been givin’ me trubble i’steead. Methody preeachers ez been pooachin’ i’ Midden Harbour, an’ they’ve aboot bagged all t’ game i’ t’ spot. You can tell Squire Fuller ’at he may knock off hoaf-a-dozen watchers, for we shan’t worrit him nae mair.’”