Henceforth, however, the feud, if such it may be called, between the Pembertons and Wanless was renewed, and became on their part a sleepless desire for petty vengeances. They never missed the smallest opportunity of making him feel their ill-will. Thomas had in other ways enough to bear with in those days, helped though he was by his freehold cottage and allotment. His intelligence told against him with most of the farmers, making them regard him with hatred and suspicion. So he got no opportunity of bettering himself, was, indeed, hardly able to keep his head above water by the severest labour. Many a time did he see other and less skilled workmen preferred before him, and often in harvest had he to work as one of a gang of reapers under another contractor, instead of himself taking the lead. This, by and by, caused him to try and find work at greater distances from home, and he was occasionally away for months at a time wood-cutting, ditch-cutting, toiling early and late for what pittance he could pick up, while his wife struggled at home to make ends meet in spite of her increasing family. By the time Thomas was 35 years old, she had borne him eight children, of whom seven were alive, and it was almost more than mortal could do to bring these up decently on 9s. or 10s. a-week. How his neighbours, who had rent to pay, managed, was more than Thomas could divine, unless they quietly stole what was not given them; as, indeed, most of them did. Many also were so demoralised as to look upon poor relief as a perquisite which they thought it no shame to accept, and even demand, on all occasions. Nearly all poached game, when they had a chance, and boasted of it to each other. In regard to game there was, in fact, no consciousness of wrong-doing in the mind of any labourer, and Thomas himself thought nothing of killing a rabbit or leveret when he had the chance; the only anxiety was not to be caught doing it. There was a clear distinction in his mind between slaying wild animals protected by selfish and abominable laws, and stealing vegetables, fowls, stray eggs, or fruit, which many of his comrades made a practice of doing, pleading in their defence that man must live.