Patton allowed himself an inward chuckle.  Even Mrs. Jellison, he thought, must admit that he knew a thing or two as to the best way of dealing with the gentry.

But Marcella fixed him with her bright frank eyes.

“I had rather ask in the village,” she said.  “If you don’t know how it is now, Mr. Patton, tell me how it used to be when you were young.  Was the preserving very strict about here?  Were there often fights, with the keepers—­long ago?—­in my grandfather’s days?—­and do you think men poached because they were hungry, or because they wanted sport?”

Patton looked at her fixedly a moment undecided, then her strong nervous youth seemed to exercise a kind of compulsion on him; perhaps, too, the pretty courtesy of her manner.  He cleared his throat again, and tried to forget Mrs. Jellison, who would be sure to let him hear of it again, whatever he said.

“Well, I can’t answer for ’em, miss, I’m sure, but if you ast me, I b’lieve ther’s a bit o’ boath in it.  Yer see it’s not in human natur, when a man’s young and ’s got his blood up, as he shouldn’t want ter have ’is sport with the wild creeturs.  Perhaps he see ’em when ee’s going to the wood with a wood cart—­or he cooms across ’em in the turnips—­wounded birds, you understan’, miss, perhaps the day after the gentry ‘as been bangin’ at ’em all day.  An’ ee don’t see, not for the life of ’im, why ee shouldn’t have ’em.  Ther’s bin lots an’ lots for the rich folks, an’ he don’t see why ee shouldn’t have a few arter they’ve enjoyed theirselves.  And mebbe he’s eleven shillin’ a week—­an’ two-threy little chillen—­you understan’, miss?”

“Of course I understand!” said Marcella, eagerly, her dark cheek flushing.  “Of course I do!  But there’s a good deal of game given away in these parts, isn’t there?  I know Lord Maxwell does, and they say Lord Winterbourne gives all his labourers rabbits, almost as many as they want.”

Her questions wound old Patton up as though he had been a disused clock.  He began to feel a whirr among his creaking wheels, a shaking of all his rusty mind.

“Perhaps they do, miss,” he said, and his wife saw that he was beginning to tremble.  “I dessay they do—­I don’t say nothink agen it—­though theer’s none of it cooms my way.  But that isn’t all the rights on it nayther—­no, that it ain’t.  The labourin’ man ee’s glad enough to get a hare or a rabbit for ’is eatin’—­but there’s more in it nor that, miss.  Ee’s allus in the fields, that’s where it is—­ee can’t help seein’ the hares and the rabbits a-comin’ in and out o’ the woods, if it were iver so.  Ee knows ivery run ov ivery one on ’em; if a hare’s started furthest corner o’ t’ field, he can tell yer whar she’ll git in by, because he’s allus there, you see, miss, an’ it’s the only thing he’s got to take his mind off like.  And then he sets a snare or two—­an’ ee gits very sharp at settin’ on ’em—­an’ ee’ll go out nights for the sport of it.  Ther isn’t many things ee’s got to liven him up; an’ ee takes ’is chances o’ goin’ to jail—­it’s wuth it, ee thinks.”