"No, sir; excuse me; that won't do. You can't creep like a sarpent. I can. They'll never know I'm a stalking of them. No more you couldn't show fight if need was, you know, sir." "How did you find that out, Sim?" asked my father, a little amused, notwithstanding the weight at his heart. "Why, sir, they do say a clergyman mustn't show fight." "Who told you that, Sim?" he persisted. "Well, I can't say, sir. Only it wouldn't be respectable; would it, sir?" "There's nothing respectable but what's right, Sim; and what's right always _is_ respectable, though it mayn't _look_ so one bit." "Suppose you was to get a black eye, sir?" "Did you ever hear of the martyrs, Sim?" "Yes, sir. I've heerd you talk on 'em in the pulpit, sir." "Well, they didn't get black eyes only,--they got black all over, you know,--burnt black; and what for, do you think, now?" "Don't know, sir, except it was for doing right." "That's just it. Was it any disgrace to them?" "No, sure, sir." "Well, if I were to get a black eye for the sake of the child, would that be any disgrace to me, Sim?" "None that I knows on, sir. Only it'd _look_ bad." "Yes, no doubt. People might think I had got into a row at the Griffin. And yet I shouldn't be ashamed of it. I should count my black eye the more respectable of the two. I should also regard the evil judgment much as another black eye, and wait till they both came round again. Lead on, Sim." They left their horses with Burton, and went toward the camp. But when they reached the slope behind which it lay, much to Sim's discomfiture, my father, instead of lying down at the foot of it, as he expected, and creeping up the side of it, after the doom of the serpent, walked right up over the brow, and straight into the camp, followed by Wagtail. There was nothing going on,--neither tinkering nor cooking; all seemed asleep; but presently out of two or three of the tents, the dingy squalor of which no moonshine could silver over, came three or four men, half undressed, who demanded of my father, in no gentle tones, what he wanted there. "I'll tell you all about it," he answered. "I'm the parson of this parish, and therefore you're my own people, you see." "We don't go to _your_ church, parson," said one of them. "I don't care; you're my own people, for all that, and I want your help." "Well, what's the matter? Who's cow's dead?" said the same man.