n, but they certainly showed a surprising
readiness to join in the harrying of a struggling and helpless man.

In any case Brand believed, and had good cause for believing, that he had
been ruined by Melrose in revenge for the county court action. His two
sons believed it also.

The tired man sat brooding over these things in the little hot room. His
wife came in, and stood at the door observing him, twisting her apron in
a pair of wet hands.

"Yo'll have your tea?"

"Aye. Where are t' lads?"

"Johnnie's gotten his papers. He's gane oot to speak wi' the
schoolmaster. He's thinkin' o' takkin' his passage for t' laast week
in t' year."

Brand made no reply. Johnnie, the elder son, was the apple of his eye.
But an uncle had offered him half his passage to Quebec, and his parents
could not stand in the way.

"An' Will?"

"He's cleanin' hissel'."

As she spoke, wavering steps were heard on the stairs, and while she
returned to her kitchen the younger son, Will Brand, opened the door of
the front room.

He was a lanky, loose-jointed youth of twenty, with a long hatchet face.
His movements were strangely clumsy, and his eye wandered. The neighbours
had always regarded him as feeble-witted; and about a year before this
time an outburst of rough practical joking on the lad's part--sudden
jumpings out from hedges to frighten school-children going home, or the
sudden whoopings and howlings of a white-sheeted figure, for the
startling of lovers in the gloaming--had drawn the attention of the
Whitebeck policeman to his "queerness." Only his parents knew of what
fits of rage he was capable.

He wore now, as he came into the living-room, an excited,
quasi-triumphant look, which did not escape his father.

"What you been after, Will?"

"Helpin' Wilson."

Wilson was a neighbouring keeper, who in June and July, before the young
pheasants were returned to the woods, occasionally employed Will Brand as
a watcher, especially at night.

Brand made no reply. His wife brought in the tea, and he and Will helped
themselves greedily. Presently Will said abruptly:

"A've made that owd gun work all right."

"Aye?" Brand's tone was interrogative, but listless.

"I shot a kestrel an' a stoat wi' un this morning."

"Yo'did, eh?"

Will nodded, his mouth crammed with bread and butter, strange lights and
flickering expressions playing over his starved, bony face.

"Wilson says I'm gettin' a varra fair shot."

"Aye? I've hea