e desperate schemes he
heard as he pretended to sleep on his lowly bed, their expeditions at
night, masked and armed, their hasty returns, the news of his father's
capture, his own removal to the house of some female in the town, the
court, the trial, the condemnation.

The father had been a harsh and brutal parent, but he had not
positively ill-used his boy. Of the Great and Merciful Father of the
fatherless the child knew nothing. He deemed himself alone in the
world. Yet grief was not his pervading feeling, nor the shame, of
being known as the son of a transport. It was revenge which burned
within him. He thought of the crowd which had come to feast upon
his father's agony; he longed to tear them to pieces, and he plucked
savagely a handful of the grass on which he leant. Oh, that he were
a man! that he could punish them all--all,--the spectators first
the constables, the judge, the jury, the witnesses,--one of them
especially, a clergyman named Leyton, who had given his evidence more
positively, more clearly, than all the others. Oh, that he could do
that man some injury,--but for him his father would not have been
identified and convicted.

Suddenly a thought occurred to him,--his eyes sparkled with fierce
delight. "I know where he lives," he said to himself; "he has the farm
and parsonage of Millwood. I will go there at once,--it is almost
dark already. I will do as I have heard father say he once did to the
Squire. I will set his barns and his house on fire. Yes, yes, he shall
burn for it,--he shall get no more fathers transported."

To procure a box of matches was an easy task, and that was all the
preparation the boy made.

The autumn was far advanced. A cold wind was beginning to moan amongst
the almost leafless trees, and George West's teeth chattered, and
his ill-clad limbs grew numb as he walked along the fields leading to
Millwood. "Lucky it's a dark night; this fine wind will fan the flame
nicely," he repeated to himself.

The clock was striking nine, but all was quiet as midnight; not a soul
stirring, not a light in the parsonage windows that he could see. He
dared not open the gate, lest the click of the latch should betray
him, so he softly climbed over; but scarcely had he dropped on the
other side of the wall before the loud barking of a dog startled
him. He cowered down behind the hay-rick, scarcely daring to breathe,
expecting each instant that the dog would spring upon him. It was
some time