“Not I. I never thought to be made of so much consequence. ’Tis good fun to see them quarrel which shall have us, and to get them to bid rum and brandy against each other to seduce us away. We that could not get dry bread at home,—how easy it is for us to fill our stomachs with the choice of the land, and get drunk with our masters at the end of the day,—our masters being luckily of our own sort!” “Yours, that is, Bob; not mine. But I don’t know but I like mine as well. He gives me plenty of spare hours, on condition of my bringing back what I earn. You should have seen what a fright he looked in when somebody said the folks were growing moral at home, and no more convicts were to be sent out.” “He was as sorry as some honester folks would be glad, Jerry. But as for dividing your earnings with your master,—they are a queer sort of earnings, I have a notion.” “Easily got enough. ’Tis only just prowling on the downs in a dark night to meet a stray sheep; or making a venture into the fold. Then, if one gets so far as into the bush, there are other ways that you know nothing of yet, Bob.” “I never can make out how you get seal oil from the woods; being as we are thirty miles from the sea.” Jerry laughed, and offered to introduce his brother one day to somebody in the bush he little dreamed of. “Do you mean, Frank, poor fellow, or Ellen? They would not go so far to meet you.” “Do you think I would ask them? It will be time enough for me to notice Frank when I have a house of my own to ask him into. I shall be the master of such as he before his time is out.” “You need not carry yourself so high, Jerry. You are in a worse bondage than he just now.” “Curse them that put me into it, and let them see if I bear it long! However, hold your tongue about it now. There is the moon through the trees, and the free turf under our feet. What a pity there is nobody with a heavy purse likely to pass while we are resting in the shadow under this clump! ’Tis such dull work when there is nothing better to be had than sheep and poultry, and so many of them that they are scarcely worth the taking!” “I like roving for the sake of roving,” said Bob. “I have plenty of mutton without stealing it.” “I like robbing for the sake of robbing,” replied his brother; “and the mutton is only the price of my frolic. But there is something I like better. Let us be off, and I will show you, (if you’ll swear not to blab,) how you may get such sport as you little think for. Learn to handle a gun, and to cross a farm-yard like a cat, and to tap at a back-door like a mouse within a wainscot, and you may laugh at the judge and the law, and all the dogs they have set to worry us.” “Why no, thank’ee,” replied Bob. “I am trying after a character, you know, so I shall stay where I am. I’ll light my pipe; and I’ve got rum enough to last till morning both for myself and somebody I rather expect to meet me.”