"I ain't done nothing--nothing serious," declared Brightly. "I was a-sitting on the heather, singing about Jesus and us belonging to 'en, when policeman comes a-shouting, there 'a be,' and I ran, your reverent. I was that mazed I didn't hardly know what I was doing. They'm after I now, and I ain't done nothing that I knows on. I was a-yetting my bread and cheese and singing. I warn't a-harming a living thing. I warn't a-harming not a butterfly, your reverent." Boodles would have laughed had Brightly been a less pathetic object. She said she believed he was honest, bent to pat Ju, then took them both into the cottage and into the little room where old Weevil was preparing a long screed, to be addressed to some society, and headed: "An Inquiry into the Number of Earthworms mutilated annually by Agricultural Implements." He was very much astonished when he saw Brightly, but became as pitiful as the girl when he had heard the story. "I am sure he speaks the truth," said Boodles for the defence. "I don't care whether it's the truth or a lie. Another poor thing caught by the Brute," muttered Weevil. "We must help him to escape. We will keep him here until dark, and then he can creep away. It's what we are always doing, all of us--trying to creep away from the Brute." Brightly seated himself in a reverential attitude, regarding poor old Weevil as a patriarch, a sort of modern Abraham who had pitched his tent in that part of the country for the benefit of the poor and friendless. He wondered if the patriarch was a prophet also, and could tell him if he would ever attain to the pony and cart; but he had not the courage to ask. "What are those things in your basket?" said Weevil. "Two rabbit-skins, sir. I makes my living out o' they. Least I tries to," added Brightly drearily. "Where have you come from?" "To-day from Lydford, sir. Yesterday from Belstone, round Okehampton, and over Sourton Down. Trade be bad, sir." "How many miles is that?" "Mebbe nearly twenty from Belstone. I went round about like, and pitched to Lydford last night." "Twenty miles for two rabbit-skins. Merciful God!" gasped Weevil. "Amen, sir," said Brightly. "Don't you know what the policeman wants you for?" "I don't, sir. I was a-sitting on the heather when he come, and I ran. I got to the top o' the village, and a lot more of 'em were after I, and I ran again. I got away from 'em, and was a-coming back vor my basket, when the reverent appeared avore I wi' my basket in the reverent's hand." "That's me," said Boodles, demurely and ungrammatically, in answer to Weevil's puzzled look. She was feeding Ju with biscuit, stroking her thin sides at the same time, and making the poor bitch share her master's impressions concerning the pleasant nature of angelic visions.