“Stote, let me go this instant. Iʼll have you discharged this very day unless you beg my pardon”.
“That you moy then, if you can, meester. A leetle chap coom fram Ingy, an’ we bin two hunner and feefty year ’long o’ the squire and his foregoers”! Nevertheless he let Rufus go, and looked over his hat indignantly.
“You are an honest fellow”, cried Hutton, when he got his breath again; “an uncommonly honest fellow, although in great need of enlightenment. It is not in my nature, my man”, here he felt like a patron, getting over his shaking, so elastic was his spirit; “I assure you, Luke—ah no, your name is Matthew; upon my word, I beg your pardon, I am almost sure it is Mark—Mr. Mark, I shall do my utmost for your benefit. Now talk no more, but act, Mark”.
“I oodnʼt a talked nothing, but for mating with your honour”.
“Then resume your taciturnity, which I see is habitual with you, and perhaps constitutional”.
Mark Stote felt sore all over. Dr. Hutton now was the collarer. Mark, in his early childhood, had been to school for a fortnight, and ran away with a sense of rawness, which any big word renewed.
“Mr. Stote, I will thank you to search in that direction, while I investigate this way”.
Mark Stote longed to suggest that possibly Dr. Hutton, being (as you might say) a foreigner, was not so well skilled in examining ground as a woodman of thirty years’ standing; and therefore that he, old Mark, should have the new part assigned to him, before it was trampled by Rufus. But the gamekeeper knew not how to express it; sure though he was (as all of us are, when truth hits the heart like a hammer) that something evil would come of slurring the matter so feebly. But who are we to blame him?—we who transport a poor ignorant girl for trying to hide her ignominy, while we throttle, before she can cry, babe Truth, who should be received in society with a “Welcome, little stranger”!
With the heavy rain–drops hanging like leeches, or running together, as they do, at every thorn or scale of the bark, seeking provocation to come down the nape of the neck of any man, Rufus Hutton went creeping under, trying not to irritate them, pretending that he was quite at home, and understood them like a jungle. Nevertheless he repented, and did not thoroughly search more than ten square yards. The things would knock him so in the face, and the stumps would stick in his trousers so, and the drops were so bad for his rheumatism; and, as it was quite impossible for any man to make way there, what on earth was there to look for?