That individually she was innocent, the reader is fully aware; although, in reality, she still had been the unconscious cause of all the disasters that had occurred. No sooner had she left her house on this eventful night, as described at the conclusion of a preceding chapter, than Mr. Longstaff, being conscious that he had stretched his authority too far, appointed his assistant, the constable, to steal out, and trace her footsteps wherever she might go, until he found her in a resting-place for the night; since, by this precaution, the steward would be enabled, in case of need, to find her again at any moment he might think proper. The constable discharged his commission so well, that he carried back a great deal more than he went for; and not only reported the lodging which Mistress Clink had taken up, but also discovered that a number of poachers, as he believed, against whom he had long held a warrant granted for offences against the game-laws, were there and then assembled in mischievous cogitation, as he had actually seen one of them emerge from a pigsty at the back of the premises. To be able to detect the unfortunate woman whom he had deprived of a home, in the very act of patronising a house of poachers upon the squire's manor, was the very thing for Mr. Longstaff. He lost no time in informing the guardians of the woods what a pretty garrison might be taken by surprise; and they, in accordance with that information, and the direction of the constable, accordingly advanced to the attack with the success which has already been related. The injury sustained by Mrs. Mallory when knocked down on the staircase was not very material; nor did she feel it half so much as the additional one inflicted on her by the magistrates, when she was, some short time after, called up and fined ten pounds for the share she had taken in this little business. Longstaff struggled hard to involve Mrs. Clink in the same difficulty, on the plea that she had aided and abetted Mrs. Mallory either in having game in her possession, or in eating it. He failed, however, to make out a case; and as the squire entirely disapproved of the step he had taken in breaking up Mrs. Clink's house, the steward had the additional mortification of hearing himself commanded not only to reinstate her therein, but also to make ample restitution for the loss and misery he had occasioned to her.