name the
past and express friendly hopes for the future. But he didn't, and it
weren't till he saw 'Santa Claus' down to the gate on his way home, that
the little chap spoke.

"Say nought and try to forget," he said. "You done your duty and that's
all the best and worst of us can do. Be my friend, for I've got but few."

Then he was gone, and Joseph woke to a surer trust in humanity and felt
our common nature crying to him to believe it; while his own policeman's
nature warned him to do no such thing. He talked far into the night with
his wife; but she was all for believing.

"Us be Christians," said Minnie, "and well we know how the Lord works.
He's come to right thinking by chastisement, and his heart's softened and
never will I believe a man as loves the little ones like him be so very
bad. He's paid for what he done and, if he wants to forget and forgive,
'tis everybody's place to do the same."

"That sounds all right," granted Joseph. "And who be I to say he's not a
repentant man? But--you didn't see his face, with ten devils staring out
of his eyes, when I took him."

"Us'll watch and pray for him," answered Minnie. "My heart tells me the
poor man won't fall again."

And they left it at that and Minnie prayed and Joseph watched; and the
woman triumphed over her husband a good bit as time went on, for Teddy
Pegram never looked back so far as could be seen, until, little by little,
even Joseph felt that his spell in the jug had changed Teddy to a member
of society a good bit out of the common.

His friends reckoned that, when another autumn came, the strain would be
too much and the old poacher might be found to fall; but, as Ned Chown
pointed out, it weren't very likely as Pegram would fall again in the same
place.

"If he was minded to fall, he'd sling his hook and go and fall somewhere
else, where he weren't known," he said, and indeed Teddy had made the same
remark himself. He stuck to lawful sport and went his quiet way, until
that happened which looked as though he might soon be minded to flit.

In the fall he sold his cottage to Ned Chown, who owned a few little
dwellings already and was a great believer in the virtue of house
property; but Pegram only let the inn-keeper have it on one condition and
that was that he should be allowed to go on living in it while he chose to
do so. He explained to Joseph Ford that he never meant to leave Little
Silver; but that he was very poor and a thought pressed