done for her is to take eighteen
pence a week off that cottage of theirs.

"No, I called the boy to me when he got off, and pretty scared he
looked when he saw me. When he came up, I asked him how he dared to
ride my horses about, without my leave. Of course he said he was
sorry, which meant nothing; and he added, as a sort of excuse, that
he used from a child to ride the horses at the mill down to the
ford for water; and that his father generally had a young one or
two, in that paddock of his by the mill, and he used often to ride
them; and seeing the pony one day, galloping about the field and
kicking up its heels, he wondered whether he could sit a horse
still, and especially whether he could keep on that pony's back.
Then he set to, to try.

"The pony flung him several times, at first; and no wonder, as he
had no saddle, and only a piece of old rope for a bridle; but he
mastered him at last, and he assured me that he had never used the
stick, and certainly he had not one when I saw him. I told him, of
course, that he knew he ought not to have done it; but that, as he
had taken it in hand, he might finish it. I said that I intended to
have it broken in for Kate, and that he had best get a bit of
sacking and put it on sideways, to accustom the pony to carry a
lady. Then I gave him a shilling, and told him I would give him
five more, when he could tell me the pony was sufficiently broken
and gentle to carry Kate."

Mrs. Ellison shook her head in disapprobation.

"It is of no use, William, my talking to the villagers as to the
ways of their boys, if that is the way you counteract my advice."

"But I don't always, my dear," the squire said blandly. "For
instance, I shall go round tomorrow morning with my dog whip to
Thorne's; and I shall offer him the choice of giving that boy of
his the soundest thrashing he ever had, while I stand by to see it,
or of going out of his house at the end of the quarter.

"I rather hope he will choose the latter alternative. That beer
shop of his is the haunt of all the idle fellows in the village. I
have a strong suspicion that he is in league with the poachers, if
he doesn't poach himself; and the first opportunity I get of laying
my finger upon him, out he goes."

A few days later when Kate Ellison issued from the gate of the
house, which lay just at the end of the village, with the basket
containing some jelly and medicine for a sick child, she found
Reuben Whitney awaiting he