But after the first relief Minta had gone in fear and trembling.  For the old woodcraft revived in Hurd, and the old passion for the fields and their chances which he had felt as a lad before his “watcher’s” place had been made intolerable to him by George Westall’s bullying.  He became excited, unmanageable.  Very soon he was no longer content with Mellor, where, since the death of young Harold, the heir, the keepers had been dismissed, and what remained of a once numerous head of game lay open to the wiles of all the bold spirits of the neighbourhood.  He must needs go on to those woods of Lord Maxwell’s, which girdled the Mellor estate on three sides.  And here he came once more across his enemy.  For George Westall was now in the far better-paid service of the Court—­and a very clever keeper, with designs on the head keeper’s post whenever it might be vacant.  In the case of a poacher he had the scent of one of his own hares.  It was known to him in an incredibly short time that that “low caselty fellow Hurd” was attacking “his” game.

Hurd, notwithstanding, was cunning itself, and Westall lay in wait for him in vain.  Meanwhile, all the old hatred between the two men revived.  Hurd drank this winter more than he had ever drunk yet.  It was necessary to keep on good terms with one or two publicans who acted as “receivers” of the poached game of the neighbourhood.  And it seemed to him that Westall pursued him into these low dens.  The keeper—­big, burly, prosperous—­would speak to him with insolent patronage, watching him all the time, or with the old brutality, which Hurd dared not resent.  Only in his excitable dwarf’s sense hate grew and throve, very soon to monstrous proportions.  Westall’s menacing figure darkened all his sky for him.  His poaching, besides a means of livelihood, became more and more a silent duel between him and his boyhood’s tyrant.

And now, after seven months of regular field-work and respectable living, it was all to begin again with the new winter!  The same shudders and terrors, the same shames before the gentry and Mr. Harden!—­the soft, timid woman with her conscience could not endure the prospect.  For some weeks after the harvest was over she struggled.  He had begun to go out again at nights.  But she drove him to look for employment, and lived in tears when he failed.

As for him, she knew that he was glad to fail; there was a certain ease and jauntiness in his air to-night as he stood calling the children: 

“Will!—­you come in at once!  Daisy!—­Nellie!”

Two little figures came pattering up the street in the moist October dusk, a third, panted behind.  The girls ran in to their mother chattering and laughing.  Hurd lifted the boy in his arm.

“Where you bin, Will?  What were yo out for in this nasty damp?  I’ve brought yo a whole pocket full o’ chestnuts, and summat else too.”