of her physique and character, interested him psychologically. 'And how was Hartas when you came away, Jimmy?' he asked as he folded up the bottle. 'Lord, sir, I came off just after you'd gone yourself, so he couldna either hev worsened or bettered, but I ken he wer swearing awful. I heard him the whiles Scilla wer talking to me about t' physic--swearing awful, he wer!' Borlase laughed. 'Swearing, was he?' he said. 'That's his chief complaint, Jimmy, to tell you the truth. It comes of _not_ telling the truth. A man fouls his throat with lies and oaths to back them up until a moral disease seizes it, and he can't speak anything else, and when he drinks and gets D.T. too, the moral and physical diseases act upon each other until he's a mass of corruption, soul and body. Take care you never swear and lie and poach grouse and fire at keepers as Hartas and his lad did. Kit's in gaol, you know, having a spell at the Mill, and Hartas is still worse off, as he lies now in a strait-jacket. Mind you're always honest to the powers that be, and touch your cap to the Admiral and Miss Marlowe.' Jimmy's eyes gleamed with awe. What he did not understand in this speech was even more impressive than what he did. 'Hartas says he'll be even with the Admiral for sending Kit to t' Mill, he says he will one of these days, sir. It's that he raves on at, and he calls Miss Cynthia too, and Lias Constantine for----' 'I daresay. For telling the truth?' said Borlase, nodding. 'Well, he witnessed he both saw them kill t' birds and lay fresh snares. Then he jumbles in Mrs. Severn and----' 'Yes, yes,' said Borlase hastily, 'he's a cantankerous old gaffer who's possessed by a thirst for vengeance against the law and those who uphold it. We all hate being found out in a sin more than the sin itself, I fear. Now get off home, and tell Scilla to keep up her heart, he'll pull through.' 'She'd a deal liefer he wouldn't,' said Jimmy, opening his jacket and buttoning up the bottle of medicine in his breast pocket. He adjusted his cap with various shovings to and fro on his shock of red hair and clutched a heavy stick that had been propped in the corner. 'Hartas's talk made me feel that queer in my inside, sir,' he said with a shrewd, half-humorous glance at him, 'that I wer fair certain there'd be a skirling o' bogies on the moor and I just brought this along to thwack t' air with.'