“Then your simplest course will be to forget you have done so,” answered the older man.  “You go your way and I’ll go mine.  Your job’s on the road, so you stop on it, Sammy, and if they busy chaps pop along, you can say you’ve heard nought moving but the owlets.”

“Duty’s duty,” replied Sam.  “You must come along with me, I guess.  Give me your air-gun, please, and pick up thicky bird.”

Green thought a moment, then he handed over the gun and picked up the pheasant and began on Borlase most forcible.  He pleaded their future relationship, the disgrace, the slur on his character and the shame to his girl; and Samuel listened very patient and granted ’twas a melancholy and most misfortunate affair; but he didn’t see no way out for either of ’em.

“Duty’s duty,” he kept saying in his big voice, like a bell tolling.

And then Chawner changed his note and grew a bit vicious.

“So be it, Borlase,” he said.  “If you’re that sort of fool, I’ll go along with you this instant moment to the police-station; but mark this:  so sure as a key’s turned on me this night, by yonder hunter’s moon I swear as you shan’t marry Cicely.  That’s so sure as I stand here, your captive.  If there’s a conviction against me, you’ll whistle for that woman, and God’s my judge I’m telling truth.”

Well, Samuel weren’t so put about at that as the other apparently expected to find him.  He well knew the size of Cicely’s love for him, and he’d heard her praise his straightness a thousand times.  ’Twas true enough she set great store on her father; but love’s love, and Sam was quite smart enough to know that love for a parent goes down the wind afore love for a lover.  He looked forward, therefore, and weren’t shook of his purpose by no threats.

“That’s as may be,” he said, “and you’ve no right, nor yet reason, to speak for her.  She loves me as never a woman loved a man, and if she saw me put my love afore my duty, I’ll tell you what she’d say—­she’d say she’d been mistook in me.”

“And don’t she love me, you pudding-faced fool!” cried Chawner.  “Don’t she set her father higher than a man she hasn’t known a year?  Be fair to yourself, Borlase, or else you’ll lose the hope of your life.  My honour’s her honour and my reputation is her reputation.  She thinks the world of me and she’s a terrible proud woman; and you can take it from me so sure as death that shell hold my side against you and cast you off if you do this fatal thing.”

Samuel chewed over that a minute; but he decided as he didn’t believe a word of it.

“We haven’t kept company in vain for ten months and four days, Chawner Green,” he said.  “I mean me and your girl.  She’s the soul of upright dealing, and if you was a better man, you’d know it so well as I do.”

“She may be,” said the other, “but she’ll honour her father’s name afore she’ll see him in your hands.  She’ll think the same as I do about this night’s work, and dare you to lay a finger on me if ever you want to look in her face again.”