Well, as elders in such a pass will do, Chawner took careful stock of Sam, and the more he gleaned of the young man’s opinions the better he liked him.  Old Green was tolerable shrewd, and along with a passion for natural history and its wonders, he didn’t leave human nature out of account.  He was going on with his own life very clever, unknown to all but one person, and among his varied interests was a boy-like love of practical joking.  But among his occupations the story of Samuel Borlase came first for a bit, and he both talked and listened to the young fellow and was a good bit amused on the quiet to find Samuel didn’t hold by no means such a high opinion of him as he began to feel for the policeman.

Of course, Cicely was always there to help his judgment; but though the natural instinct of the parent is to misdoubt a child’s opinions—­generally with tolerable good reason—­it happened in this case that love lit the girl’s mind to good purpose.  She’d laugh with her father sometimes, that Sam hadn’t no dazzling sense of fun himself, and it entertained her a lot to see Sam plodding in his mind after her nimble-witted father and trying in vain to see a joke.  But what delighted her most was Sam’s own dark forebodings about Mr. Green’s manner of life, and his high-minded hopes that some day, come he was Chawner’s son-in-law, he would save the elder man’s soul alive.  That always delighted Cicely above everything, and she’d pull a long face and sigh and share Samuel’s fine ambitions, and hope how, between them in the future, they’d make her father a better member of society than the Trusham gamekeepers thought he was.

Not that Borlase could honestly say the marks of infamy came out in Mr. Green’s view of life.  He showed a wonderful knowledge of wild birds and beasts and plants even, and abounded in rich tales of poaching adventures, though he never told ’em as being in his own personal experience.  He declared no quarrel with the law himself, but steadfastly upheld it on principle.  At the same time a joke was a joke, and if a joke turned on breaking the game laws, or hoodwinking them appointed to uphold right and justice, Chawner would tell the joke and derive a good deal of satisfaction from Sam’s attitude thereto.

So time passed and near a year was spent, but Chawner dallied to say the word and let ’em wed; and the crash came on a night in October, when the policeman suddenly found himself called to night duty by Inspector Chowne.  ’Twas a beat along the Trusham covers, and a constable had gone ill, and the gamekeepers were yowling about the poachers as usual, instead of catching ’em.  So Samuel went his way and looked sharp out for any untoward sign of his fellow-man, or any unlawful sound from the dark woods, where Trusham pheasants harboured of a night.  He was full of his own thoughts too, for he wanted cruel to be married, and so did Cicely, and the puzzle was to get Mr. Green to consent without a rumpus.