was a man and a
brother--at least so books used to say. Time was, when he had
looked on a poacher as a Pariah 'hostem humani generis'--and only
deplored that the law forbade him to shoot them down, like cats and
otters; but he had begun to change his mind.

He had learnt, and learnt rightly, the self-indulgence, the danger,
the cruelty, of indiscriminate alms. It looked well enough in
theory, on paper. 'But--but--but,' thought Lancelot, 'in practice,
one can't help feeling a little of that un-economic feeling called
pity. No doubt the fellow has committed an unpardonable sin in
daring to come into the world when there was no call for him; one
used to think, certainly, that children's opinions were not
consulted on such points before they were born, and that therefore
it might be hard to visit the sins of the fathers on the children,
even though the labour-market were a little overstocked--"mais nous
avons change tout cela," like M. Jourdain's doctors. No doubt, too,
the fellow might have got work if he had chosen--in Kamschatka or
the Cannibal Islands; for the political economists have proved,
beyond a doubt, that there is work somewhere or other for every one
who chooses to work. But as, unfortunately, society has neglected
to inform him of the state of the Cannibal Island labour-market, or
to pay his passage thither when informed thereof, he has had to
choose in the somewhat limited labour-field of the Whitford Priors'
union, whose workhouse is already every winter filled with abler-
bodied men than he, between starvation--and this--. Well, as for
employing him, one would have thought that there was a little work
waiting to be done in those five miles of heather and snipe-bog,
which I used to tramp over last winter--but those, it seems, are
still on the "margin of cultivation," and not a remunerative
investment--that is, to capitalists. I wonder if any one had made
Crawy a present of ten acres of them when he came of age, and
commanded him to till that or be hanged, whether he would not have
found it a profitable investment? But bygones are bygones, and
there he is, and the moors, thanks to the rights of property--in
this case the rights of the dog in the manger--belong to poor old
Lavington--that is, the game and timber on them; and neither Crawy
nor any one else can touch them. What can I do for him? Convert
him? to what? For the next life, even Tregarva's talisman see