“I’d my reasons as is not for you to know,” answered Redmore surlily. “I’m sure you don’t consarn yourself for me and mine so as to care.” “There you are mistaken,” said Pasco. “I don’t mean to say that I am deeply interested in you, but I don’t intend, unless driven to it, to take any steps to get you acquainted with Jack Ketch.” “I can defend myself pretty well, suppose you do.” “I’m not the fool to risk my head in another man’s quarrel.” “And I can take to my heels and find a hiding-place anywhere on these moors.” “Ay, and a starving-place where your bones will rot.” “What have you to say to me?” Redmore spoke surlily. Now that his whereabouts was discovered, it would be needful for him to shift his place of refuge. “I suppose you don’t deny setting fire to Farmer Pooke’s rick?” said Pasco. Roger shrugged his shoulders and jerked his head. “How did you do it? smoking a pipe under the tree when drunk?” “No, it warn’t.” “How was it, then?” “I warn’t drunk, niver but that once, and that wor just because o’ Jackson’s ‘Tee-dum.’ I’ve a bit of a orgin in zingin’, and the innkeeper he wor terrible longing to have me in the choir. So he got me in, and they tried to teach me the tenor part o’ Jackson’s ‘Tee-dum,’ and I cu’dn’t maister it noways; and they stood me liquor, and I tried, and I cu’d do naught wi’ it. You see t’other parts went curling up and about, and bothered me. If they’d a’ stopped and let me zing alone, I cu’d ha’ done it. Then I went out into the open air, and it wor cold and frosty, and somehow I got mazed wi’ the drink and the ‘Tee-dum’ together, and I rinned agin my maister, Farmer Pooke, and I reckon I zed what I ort not, and he turned me off. That wor it. I niver did it avor, and I’ll niver do it agin. Save and presarve me from liquor and Jackson’s ‘Tee-dum’!” “Never mind about that. So you didn’t fire the rick with your pipe?” “No, I didn’t. If it had niver been for Jackson’s ‘Tee-dum,’ I’d not now be in risk of bein’ hanged.” “Of course it was Jackson did it all,” sneered Pasco. “I don’t mean to say that. It wor the beginning on it. I were throwed out o’ work, and were starvin’, and my little maid, her died, and then I wor like a mazed chap, and I ran out wi’ the cann’l, and so I did it.” “Oh, with the candle?” “It wor a rushlight.” “I’ve heard of barns and storehouses being set fire to by men going into them to sleep, and lighting their pipes. There was the landlord of the Crown and Anchor at Newton. He had a miserable sort of a house, but a tramp got in one night”— “What, into his house?” “No, into a linhay over the pigstye, and slept there, or went there to sleep, and there was straw in the loft, and in smoking his pipe he managed to set fire to the straw, and then the whole public-house was in a blaze and burnt down.” “I’ve heard of that. Nobody knows what became o’ the tramp. There wor roast pig found in the ashes, and whether roast tramp nobody cared to inquire.”