“Be you one of the fam’ly, sir?”
“No,” said Bertie, and then was silent in some confusion, for he bethought him that, without any shoes on, he might also be arrested at the lodge gates.
“I thought as not, ’cos you’re barefoot,” said the brown-cheeked boy, with a little contempt supplying the place of courage. “Dunno who you be, sir, but seems to I as you’ve no call to preach to me: you be a-trespassin’ too.”
Bertie colored.
“I am not doing any harm,” he said, with dignity; “you are: you have been stealing. If you are not really a wicked boy, you will take the pheasant straight to that gentleman, and beg him to forgive you, and I dare say he will give you work.”
“There’s no work for my dad’s son,” said the little poacher, half sadly, half sullenly: “the keepers are all agen us: ’tis as much as mother and me and Susie can do to git a bit o’ bread.”
“What work can you do?”
“I can make the gins,” said the little sinner, touching the trap with pride. “Mostwhiles, I never comes out o’ daylight; but all the forenoon Susie was going off her head, want o’ summat t’ eat.”
“I’m sorry for Susie and you,” said the little Earl, with sympathy. “But indeed, indeed, nothing can excuse a theft, or make God——”
“The keepers!” yelled the boy, with a scream like a hare’s, and he dashed head-foremost into the bushes, casting on to Bertie’s lap the gin and the dead bird. Bertie was so surprised that he sat perfectly mute and still: the little boy had disappeared as fast as a rabbit bolts at sight of a ferret. Two grim big men with dogs and guns burst through the hawthorn, and one of them seized the little Earl with no gentle hand.