"Hang the villain!" said Kiah, "he really deserves nabbing; and I've half a mind to go after him and collar him; for, confound him! he grows more brazenly impudent than a miller's horse! he's getting worse than come-out!"
"You'll ha' no need to do that," said the incorrigibly idle maiden, who had gone to the window to peep at the poacher, in spite of her mistress's fierce scolding, "he's turned again, and has been listening to you, and now he's coming hither as fast as shanks' horse can carry him!"
And so it was, for Dick had changed his intent; and, with a perverse will, now strode, at full stretch, towards the door of the farm house.
"Curse his gallows-neck!" exclaimed farmer Dobson, between his teeth, when he heard the maiden's words: "has he such a brass-face as that comes to? I'll nab him this time, or I'm a Dutchman else!"
Raven Dick's foot was on the grunsel almost before the farmer had finished this last sentence; and throwing himself on a chair in the kitchen, and the hares on the cottage floor, alike with the air and impudence of one who braves the gallows, he asked for a horn of ale and a lump of bread and cheese with as little ceremony as if he had been a squire in his own mansion. Dick's audacity, however, had now overstretched its mark. The farmer's strong fist was on Dick's frock collar in a moment; the next, the farmer had dragged him from his seat; and, in the third, Dick was prostrate on the cottage floor. Unluckily, Kiah Dobson's anger overbalanced his caution; and, with the impetuosity of his own force upon the poacher, Kiah brought himself, also, to the floor.
Dick had so long careered it over the farmer's fields, by day and by night, and had so often "snickled," or noosed the hares, as one may say, under the farmer's nose, and the farmer had all the while taken it so mildly, that the poacher was never more surprised in his life than at this portentous assault upon his person by mild, good-natured Kiah Dobson. Had it not been for his imaginary security of feeling, the poacher would not so easily have been overthrown. And, as it was, Dick was not disposed to believe that all was over with him; he speedily succeeded in wriggling his body from under the farmer's weight, and, in the course of a few minutes, had his knee upon Kiah's breast, and began to grab the farmer so tightly by the throat that he soon grew blacker than Dick himself. Luckily Dame Dobson's churn staff came to the rescue. She pommelled the hard head of the poacher so soundly, and her strokes came so thick and fast after each other, that he was compelled to loose his hold on the farmer's throat, in order to catch the churn-staff from the farmer's wife. The engagement, however, now became more furious. Poor Kiah lay gasping on the floor, for some moments, unable to rise, much less to aim a blow at the adversary; but the war was at its height between Raven Dick and the dame, and two stout maidens of her service. Mops, brooms, and brushes were successively impelled with no playful force towards the seasoned skull of the poacher, but were shivered with the rapidity of lightning, as he dexterously caught hold of them, and wrested them from the hands of his clamorous assailants. The din of female tongues was scarcely less than the noise of blows; and when the more effective ammunition was all expended, the discharge was confined, at last, to the small shot of epithets, poured in every imaginable shape, from the fair musketry of the three female belligerents' mouths.
The scene had now become as laughable as previously it had been serious. Raven Dick stood on a chair in the middle of the floor, drawing his face into the most whimsical forms and mocking the women, while they stood around him, each with hands on hip, and tearing their throats with the effort to abuse and irritate, or otherwise to shame him. The farmer, seeing what turn the war had taken, had seated himself on a chair, and forgetting his anger, was shaking his sides with laughter at the ludicrous and unwonted scene presented that night in his kitchen. The affray at length shrank into silence; the women's tongues were fairly wearied; they each sat down to rest; and so Dick sat down, likewise.
"Dang it Dick, thou'rt a good woolled 'un!" said the hearty farmer; "but thou art an idle rogue, after all."
"How so, Maister Kiah?" asked the saucy poacher; "why do you call me an idle rogue?"
"Because thou art fonder of stealing than working," quickly replied the farmer.