"Ay! Well, that floored me. I felt that I could hold out no longer. I meant to have waited to see which way the trial went----" "Yes?" the vicar said again, seeing he hesitated. "I've always believed that no jury that wasn't prejudiced would convict him on the evidence." "You refer to Ralph Penlogan, of course?" "The young man who's in prison on the charge of shooting Squire Hamblyn. Do you think he's anything like me?" "You certainly are not unlike him in the general outline of your face. But, of course, anyone who knows young Penlogan----" "Would never mistake him for me," the other interrupted. "Well, I should say not, certainly." "And yet bigger mistakes have been made. But I'd better tell you the whole story. I don't know what'll become of mother and the young ones, but I can't bear it any longer, and that's a fact. When I heard that that poor woman had been took off to the workhouse, I said to myself, 'Jim Brewer, you're a coward.' And that's the reason I'm here----" "Yes?" said the vicar again, and waited for his visitor to proceed. "It was I who shot the squire!" The vicar started, but did not speak. "I had no notion that he was about, or I shouldn't have ventured into the plantation, you may be quite sure. I was after anything I could get--hare, or rabbit, or pheasant, or barnyard fowl, if nothing else turned up." "Then you were poaching?" said the vicar. "Call it anything you like, but if you was in my place, maybe you'd have done the same. There hadn't been a bit of fresh meat in our house for a fortnight, and little Fred, who'd been ill, was just pining away. You see I'd been off work, through crushing my thumb, for a whole month, and we'd got to the end of the tether. Butcher wouldn't trust us no further, and we'd been living on dry bread and a little skimmed milk, with a vegetable now and then. It was terrible hard on us all. I didn't mind myself so much, but to see the little one go hungry----" "But what does your father do?" the vicar interrupted. "Father was killed in the mine six years agone, and I've been the only one as has earned anything since. Well, you see, I took the old musket--though I knew, of course, I had no licence--and I went out on the common to shoot anything as came in the way--but nothing turned up. Then I went into the plantation, and as I was getting over a hedge I came face to face with the squire. "Well, I draws back in a moment, and that very moment something catches the trigger, and off the gun went. A minute after I heard the squire a-howling and a-screaming like mad, and when next I looks over the hedge he was running for dear life and shouting at the top of his voice.