ne which had been burned. "Perhaps he has
gone to see John Warren!"

Dick hesitated as to whether he should follow, and as he hesitated he
reached the door of the hut and peeped in, to make sure that the dog was
not there asleep.

The place was vacant, and as untidy already as the old hut. In one
corner there was a heap of feathers plucked from the wild-geese he had
shot; in another a few skins, two being those of foxes, the cunning
animals making the fen, where hunters never came, their sanctuary.
There were traces, too, of Dave's last meal.

But it was at none of these that Dick looked so earnestly, but at the
'coy-man's old well-rubbed gun hanging in a pair of slings cut from some
old boot, and tempting the lad as, under the circumstances, a gun would
tempt.

Hickathrift had refused to lend him one, badly as he wanted it; and here
by accident was the very thing he wanted staring at him almost as if
asking him to take it.

And Dave! where was he?

Dave might be anywhere, and not return perhaps for days. His comings
and goings were very erratic, and Dick tried to think that if the man
were there he would have lent him the gun.

But it was a failure.

"He wouldn't have lent it to me," said Dick sadly; and he turned to go.
But as he glanced round, there was the old powder-horn upon a
roughly-made shelf, and beside it, the leathern bag in which Dave kept
his shot, with a little shell loose therein which he used for a measure.

It was tempting. There was the gun; there lay the ammunition. He could
take the gun, use it, and bring it back, and give Dave twice as much
powder and shot as he had fired away. He could even clean the gun if he
liked; but he would not do that, but bring it back boldly, and own to
having taken it Dave would not be very cross, and if he were it did not
matter.

He would take the gun.

No, he would not. It was like stealing the man's piece.

No, it was not--only borrowing, and Dave would be the gainer.

Still he hesitated, thinking of his father, of Hickathrift's refusal, of
its being a mean action to come and take a man's property in his
absence; and in this spirit Dick flung out of the hut and walked
straight down to the boat, seeing nothing but that gun tempting him as
it were, and asking him to seize the opportunity and enjoy a day's
shooting untrammelled by anyone.

"It wouldn't do," he said with a sigh as he got slowly into the boat and
stooped to untie the rope, when,