iles in the opposite direction, you know. Now, if I
were once suspected, they would find out that I constantly went to
Slam's, who finds agents to sell the game for all the poachers round,
and some of the keepers too, if the truth were known, and that I had
been seen in Marriner's company; who is considered to make a regular
income out of Lord Woodruff's pheasants, and they would have some
grounds to go upon. But Buller is all right."

But though he spoke like this to quiet Edwards, Saurin did not care
whether Buller got into serious trouble or not. He was a friend of
Crawley's, had seconded him in the fight, and given him advice which
contributed as much as anything else to Saurin's defeat. If he were
expelled and sent to prison it would not break his (Saurin's) heart.
The only fear was that if Edwards blabbed--and he was so weak that he
could not be absolutely trusted--fellows would think it horribly mean to
let Buller be punished unjustly, for what he himself had done. And on
this account, and this account only, he hoped that Buller would get off.

Mr Elliot, the magistrate, lived at Penredding, the village where Mr
Rabbits had gone to lecture, and thither Tom Buller was driven in a
close fly, the doctor accompanying him. Lord Woodruff, who had come to
Weston on horseback, rode over separately. Mr Elliot was a man of good
common sense, though his opinions were not quite so weighty as his
person, which declined to rise in one scale when fifteen stone was in
the other. He was a just man also, though perhaps he was less dilatory
in attending to the wishes of a member of one of the great county
families than he might be in the case of a mere nobody. If a rich man
and a poor one had a dispute, he considered that the presumption was in
favour of the former, but he did not allow this prejudice to influence
him one iota in the teeth of direct evidence.

Just after the fly had left Weston some snow flakes began to fall.
"Ah!" thought Tom, "it may snow as hard as it pleases now. I have had a
good turn at any rate. I was not able to do the outside edge when the
frost set in, and now I can cut an eight. I wish, though, I could keep
my balance in the second curl of those threes. I must practise going
backwards, and stick to that next time I have a chance."

Dr Jolliffe, who saw that he was absorbed in reflection, thought that
he was dwelling upon the serious nature of the position, in which he
found himself, and w