"I think I must go. Boodles," he said feebly.
He turned away, and his eyes fell upon the village. There was a church, and there was Ebenezer, and a meeting-house also. Surely so many religious houses were hardly necessary in one small village. Church and chapels dominated the place; and in those buildings a vast amount of theory was preached concerning ancient literature, and a place of morbid imagination called Hell, and a place of healthier imagination called Heaven; and upon that field on the side of the moor the regular worshippers at those buildings were enjoying themselves. There was a failure somewhere, only Weevil had not the sense to find out where. High above were the tors, and it was there, no doubt, that the early inhabitants stood to worship Baal; and there possibly a vast amount of theory was preached concerning the whole duty of man, and a twofold future state; and then the men went down to fight and plunder. It seemed to have been a theoretical religion then. It is a theoretical religion now. Theories have swamped the world, submerging the practical side like the lost Atlantis. It is not religion which compels men to cease from doing murder. It is the fear of vengeance.
Boodles and Weevil left the field, pale and miserable. When they were outside the old man went away and was violently sick. They abandoned the field in time, for the men were getting beyond control. When the rabbits were slaughtered they sought for small birds and shot at them until their cartridges were exhausted. Even Pendoggat had lost his self-restraint, although he did not show it like the rest. The smell of blood was in his nostrils, and he wanted to go on killing. He longed to shoot at the men around him. The victims were all dead at last. The happy children had seen to that, and went off home to get their hands and faces washed, tired out with the day's fun. That clever painter of human nature, Hogarth, missed something during his lifetime. He could not have seen a rabbit-shoot in a Dartmoor village. Had he done so, there might have been a fifth plate added to his Four Stages of Cruelty.
"I must drink something," said Weevil, when he reached home. "You were right, little maid. I ought not to have gone."
"Haunted water, daddy?" suggested Boodles, with a wan little smile.
"Yes, darling. I think I have earned it. But not badly haunted."
"Just a gentle rapping, not groans and chain-rattling," she said, trying to be merry, having no reason to feel unhappy, as she went for the brandy bottle. That was how the water was to be haunted. Weevil was practically a teetotaler, in a different sense from Farmer Chegwidden, but he sometimes took a suspicion of brandy when he was run down, as then.
"Boodle-oodle," he said in a feeble way, after refreshing himself, "you have seen the Brute rampant. What do you think of it?"
"I don't think, daddy-man. It's no use when you can't do anything. I just label it a queer puzzle, and put it away along with all the other queer puzzles. And you would be much happier if you would do the same."
"I cannot," he groaned. "I suppose those men were enjoying themselves, but what right have they to an enjoyment which makes other people suffer? I say they have no right. Animals have to be killed for food; but what would be done to a butcher who slaughtered his beasts in the middle of the street? Those men were not killing for any purpose apart from the love of killing, and they were doing it publicly. They were mad. They had the faces one sees in a bad dream. And now they have gone to stuff themselves with food, and then they will swill liquor until they are mad again."