“Be blessed if the whole parish ban’t up an’ doing to-night!” laughed Daniel. “’Tis some blackguard trapping Johnny Beer’s rabbits, I lay.” Then he set off briskly homewards and did not stop until he passed the corner of Westcombe woods and saw two men standing together at the stile over which he had himself crept some hours before. “Seen anybody upalong, mate?” asked one. “Yes, I did,” answered Daniel. “A chap in a hurry, too--running for his life.” “You be Dan Sweetland!” cried the other man. “Did you hear a gun fire awhile back, Sweetland?” “I heard several,” replied the young man. “They’ve been busy down to Middlecott, or I’m mistaken. For my part, I wish I’d been there; but I wasn’t. Too much on my hands, you see, to trouble about sporting. I’m going to be married to-morrow; an’ you can tell your old man, Wilkins, that my sweetheart was rather astonished he didn’t give her a wedding present--him being related by marriage.” The keepers laughed. Both felt morally certain that Daniel had fired the shot which brought them from the distant woods; both knew that to prove it would be impossible. “An’ I dare say there’ll be a nice pheasant for supper to-morrow night at Hangman’s Hut--eh, Dan?” asked one. “Oh, no, there won’t, Jack Bates. I like my game hung a bit, same as the quality do. If you’ll come to supper this day week, I’ll see what I can do for ’e.” The keepers laughed again, and Sweetland went his way. At home yet another surprise awaited him. His father’s cottage flamed with lights. Instead of silence and sleep brooding here, with the glimmering leaden statues standing like sentinels above, as he had often seen them on returning from nocturnal enterprises, Dan found his father’s cottage awake and full of stir and bustle. The door was open and from the kitchen came Matthew’s voice. When Dan entered Mr Sweetland was sitting in an old eared chair by the fire in his nightshirt. A red nightcap covered his head, and his person was largely exposed, where Mrs Sweetland applied vinegar and brown paper to red bruises. The keeper evidently endured great agony, but no sign of suffering escaped his lips. He turned to Dan and spoke. “Be that you? Where was you this night, Daniel?” “Not in Middlecott Woods, father; that I’ll swear to. But I’m feared that you was--to poor purpose. Have ’e catched anybody?”