“It’s them makes the rules of the game and nobody ever arst me to play it. I don’t blame ’em, mind you. Me and you might very well do the same. But brast me if I see where the sense of _my_ keeping the rules comes in. This world ought to be a share out, Gawd meant it to be a share out. And me and you—we been done out of our share. That justifies us.” “It isn’t right to steal,” said Bealby. “It isn’t right to steal—certainly. It isn’t right—but it’s universal. Here’s a chap here over this fence, ask ’im where ’e got ’is land. Stealing! What you call stealing, matey, _I_ call restitootion. You ain’t probably never even ’eard of socialism.” “I’ve ’eard of socialists right enough. Don’t believe in Gawd and ’aven’t no morality.” “Don’t you believe it. Why!—’Arf the socialists are parsons. What I’m saying _is_ socialism—practically. _I’m_ a socialist. I know all abart socialism. There isn’t nothing you can tell me abart socialism. Why!—for three weeks I was one of these here Anti-Socialist speakers. Paid for it. And I tell you there ain’t such a thing as property left; it’s all a blooming old pinch. Lords, commons, judges, all of them, they’re just a crew of brasted old fences and the lawyers getting in the stuff. Then you talk to me of stealing! _Stealing!_” The tramp’s contempt and his intense way of saying ‘stealing’ were very unsettling to a sensitive mind. They bought some tea and grease in a village shop and the tramp made tea in his old tin with great dexterity and then they gnawed bread on which two ounces of margarine had been generously distributed. “Live like fighting cocks, we do,” said the tramp wiping out his simple cuisine with the dragged-out end of his shirt sleeve. “And if I’m not very much mistaken we’ll sleep to-night on a nice bit of hay....” But these anticipations were upset by a sudden temptation, and instead of a starry summer comfort the two were destined to spend a night of suffering and remorse. A green lane lured them off the road, and after some windings led them past a field of wire-netted enclosures containing a number of perfect and conceited-looking hens close beside a little cottage, a vegetable garden and some new elaborate outhouses. It was manifestly a poultry farm, and something about it gave the tramp the conviction that it had been left, that nobody was at home. These realizations are instinctive, they leap to the mind. He knew it, and an ambition to know further what was in the cottage came with the knowledge. But it seemed to him desirable that the work of exploration should be done by Bealby. He had thought of dogs, and it seemed to him that Bealby might be unembarrassed by that idea. So he put the thing to Bealby. “Let’s have a look round ere,” he said. “You go in and see what’s abart....”