"Just go home to father's, sir; not a foot else, s'help me."
"One of your friends, as you call them, will have to go to the doctor, if I am not very much mistaken; for the rap I gave you was nothing to what he got. You're all right?"
"It hurt, sir, I can tell ye;--but that won't matter."
"Well, Sam,--there; you may go. I shall be after you to-morrow, and the last word I say to you, to-night, is this;--as far as I can see, you're on the road to the gallows. It isn't pleasant to be hung, and I would advise you to change your road." So saying, he let go his hold, and stood waiting till Sam should have taken his departure.
"Don't be a-coming after me, to-morrow, parson, please," said the man.
"Dont'ee tell her of my being here, Mr. Fenwick, and nobody shan't ever come anigh this place again,--not in the way of prigging anything."
"You fool, you!" said the parson. "Do you think that it is to save anything that I might lose, that I let you go now? Don't you know that the thing I want to save is you,--you,--you; you helpless, idle, good-for-nothing reprobate? Go home, and be sure that I shall do the best I can according to my lights. I fear that my lights are bad lights, in that they have allowed me to let you go."
When he had seen Sam take his departure through the front gate, he returned to the house, and found that his wife, who had gone to bed, had come down-stairs in search of him.
"Frank, you have frightened me so terribly! Where have you been?"
"Thief-catching. And I'm afraid I've about split one fellow's back. I caught another, but I let him go."
Then he told her the whole story,--how Gilmore had seen the men, and had come up to him; how he had gone out and had a tussle with one man, whom he had, as he thought, hurt; and how he had then caught another, while the third escaped.
"We ain't safe in our beds, then," said the wife.
"You ain't safe in yours, my dear, because you chose to leave it; but I hope you're safe out of it. I doubt whether the melons and peaches are safe. The truth is, there ought to be a gardener's cottage on the place, and I must build one. I wonder whether I hurt that fellow much. I seemed to hear the bone crunch."
"But what could I do? I got that thing because I thought it safer than a pistol, but I really think it's worse. I might have murdered them all, if I'd lost my temper,--and just for half-a-dozen apricots!"