“But the creatures, ay; they have the best of it. You point your gun at them, or you wring their necks, and it’s all over. I’m fond of the creatures--creatures of all kinds. I’m fond of being out with them on a heathery moor like this all myself. They know me, and there’s no fear in them. In the morning early, when the air’s all blue with the dawn, the stirring and the moving there is, and the scudding about, setting the house in order! A thing not the size of your hand will come out with two bright eyes, and cock its head and look up at you. A cat may look at a king; a bit of a moor chicken, or a rabbit the size o’ my thumb, up and faces you, and, ‘Who are you, my man?’ That is what they looks like; but you never see them like that after it’s full day.” “Then is night their happy time?” said Geoff, humouring his strange companion. “Night, they’re free. There’s none about that wishes them harm; and though I snare varmint, and sometimes take a hare or a bird,--I’ll not deny it, my young lord, though you were to clap me in prison again to-morrow--they’re not afraid o’ me; they know I’ll not harm them. Even the varmint, if they didn’t behave bad and hurt the rest, I’d never have the heart. When you go back, if you do go back----” “I must go back,” said Geoff, very gravely. “Why should not I? You don’t think I could stay up here?” “I was not thinking one thing or another. The like of you is contrary. I’ve little to do with men; but when you go, if you go, it might be early morning, the blue time, at the dawn. Then’s the time to see; when there’s all the business to be done afore the day, and after the night. Children is curious,” said Bampfylde, with a softening of his voice, which felt in the darkness like a slowly dawning smile; “but creatures is more curious yet. I like to watch them. You’ll see all the life that’s in the moors if it’s that time when you go.” “I suppose if there is anything to tell me I cannot go sooner,” said Geoff. His tone was grave, and so was his face, though that was invisible. “Then it will be day before I get home, and they will all know--perhaps I was a fool.” “For coming?” said the man, turning round to peer into his face though it was covered by the darkness; and then he gave a low laugh. “I could have told you that!”