"You fool, you!" said the parson. "Do you think that it is to save anything that I might lose, that I let you go now? Don't you know that the thing I want to save is you,--you,--you; you helpless, idle, good-for-nothing reprobate? Go home, and be sure that I shall do the best I can according to my lights. I fear that my lights are bad lights, in that they have allowed me to let you go." When he had seen Sam take his departure through the front gate, he returned to the house, and found that his wife, who had gone to bed, had come down-stairs in search of him. "Frank, you have frightened me so terribly! Where have you been?" "Thief-catching. And I'm afraid I've about split one fellow's back. I caught another, but I let him go." "What on earth do you mean, Frank?" Then he told her the whole story,--how Gilmore had seen the men, and had come up to him; how he had gone out and had a tussle with one man, whom he had, as he thought, hurt; and how he had then caught another, while the third escaped. "We ain't safe in our beds, then," said the wife. "You ain't safe in yours, my dear, because you chose to leave it; but I hope you're safe out of it. I doubt whether the melons and peaches are safe. The truth is, there ought to be a gardener's cottage on the place, and I must build one. I wonder whether I hurt that fellow much. I seemed to hear the bone crunch." "Oh, Frank!" "But what could I do? I got that thing because I thought it safer than a pistol, but I really think it's worse. I might have murdered them all, if I'd lost my temper,--and just for half-a-dozen apricots!" "And what became of the man you took?" "I let him go." "Without doing anything to him?" "Well; he got a tap too." "Did you know him?" "Yes, I knew him,--well." "Who was he, Frank?" The parson was silent for a moment, and then he answered her. "It was Sam Brattle." "Sam Brattle, coming to rob?" "He's been at it, I fear, for months, in some shape." "And what shall you do?" "I hardly know as yet. It would about kill her and Fanny, if they were told all that I suspect. They are stiff-necked, obstinate, ill-conditioned people--that is, the men. But I think Gilmore has been a little hard on them. The father and brother are honest men. Come;--we'll go to bed." CHAPTER IV. THERE IS NO ONE ELSE.