Hurd thrust his arm deep into the hole where he had put the ferret.  “Ther’s summat in the way,” he declared at last.  “Mos’ likely a dead un.  Gi’ me the spade.”

He dug away the mouth of the hole, making as little noise as possible, and tried again.

“’Ere ee be,” he cried, clutching at something, drew it out, exclaimed in disgust, flung it away, and pounced upon a rabbit which on the removal of the obstacle followed like a flash, pursued by the lost ferret.  Hurd caught the rabbit by the neck, held it by main force, and killed it; then put the ferret into his pocket.  “Lord!” he said, wiping his brow, “they do come suddent.”

What he had pulled out was a dead cat; a wretched puss, who on some happy hunt had got itself wedged in the hole, and so perished there miserably.  He and Patton stooped over it wondering; then Hurd walked some paces along the bank, looking warily out to the right of him across the open country all the time.  He threw the poor malodorous thing far into the wood and returned.

The two men lit their pipes under the shelter of the bushes, and rested a bit, well hidden, but able to see out through a break in the bit of thicket.

“Six on ’em,” said Hurd, looking at the stark creatures beside him.  “I be too done to try another bury.  I’ll set a snare or two, an’ be off home.”

Patton puffed silently.  He was wondering whether Hurd would give him one rabbit or two.  Hurd had both “plant” and skill, and Patton would have been glad enough to come for one.  Still he was a plaintive man with a perpetual grievance, and had already made up his mind that Hurd would treat him shabbily to-night, in spite of many past demonstrations that his companion was on the whole of a liberal disposition.

“You bin out workin’ a day’s work already, han’t yer?” he said presently.  He himself was out of work, like half the village, and had been presented by his wife with boiled swede for supper.  But he knew that Hurd had been taken on at the works at the Court, where the new drive was being made, and a piece of ornamental water enlarged and improved—­mainly for the sake of giving employment in bad times.  He, Patton, and some of his mates, had tried to get a job there.  But the steward had turned them back.  The men off the estate had first claim, and there was not room for all of them.  Yet Hurd had been taken on, which had set people talking.

Hurd nodded, and said nothing.  He was not disposed to be communicative on the subject of his employment at the Court.

“An’ it be true as she be goin’ to marry Muster Raeburn?”

Patton jerked his head towards the right, where above a sloping hedge the chimneys of Mellor and the tops of the Mellor cedars, some two or three fields away, showed distinct against the deep night blue.

Hurd nodded again, and smoked diligently.  Patton, nettled by this parsimony of speech, made the inward comment that his companion was “a deep un.”  The village was perfectly aware of the particular friendship shown by Miss Boyce to the Hurds.  He was goaded into trying a more stinging topic.