“That we won’t do. Push on, Ben Page,” shouted one of the men.
The click as of guns being cocked was heard.
“If you fire, so do we; and we have three shots to your one,” cried Ben. “On, lads, on.”
“I know you by your voice, Master Page,” said one of the keepers. “I see you too, now I am nearer to you.”
“If you do, take that for your pains,” exclaimed Ben, scarcely thinking, in his rage, of what he was about. The report of a gun was heard. One of the gamekeepers fell. The poachers dashed forward. Another keeper was knocked over. The rest ran off to hide in the wood, thinking that they would all be murdered; while the poachers, without stopping to see what harm had been done to the fallen men, hurried out of the wood, leaving them on the ground. Bad men are often cowards; and cowards are careless of what others suffer.
The poachers talked very big, but their hearts sunk within them. The most unhappy was James Grey. The others dreaded being found out and punished. With him it was not the fear of being found out and punished, so much as the thought that he had been with those who had caused the death of a fellow-creature; for he made sure, from the groan the keeper uttered when he fell, that he had been killed. His conscience, never quite at rest, even when he went with Ben Page into his worst haunts, was awakened.
“I am just as guilty as if I had killed the man with my own hand,” he said to himself. “And may be the other man will die too; for the butt end of Turner’s gun came down with a fearful blow on his head, and he dropped as if shot. What shall I do? What shall I do? I will go and deliver myself up, and confess all. I shall be hung very likely: but I would sooner be hung than feel that I had killed a fellow-man.”
Such were James’s thoughts as he and his companions hurried towards Hillbrook. Here and there on their way the rest of the men went off to their homes, till Ben and James were left alone. James then told Ben of his sorrow at what had happened, and how he thought he would give himself up.
“Nonsense; that will never do,” said Ben. “No one knows who fired the shot, or who knocked the other keeper down; you don’t, I am sure.”
Ben knew that James did know well enough that he, Ben himself, had shot the keeper.