I was up early next morning, and was going off for my customary swim when, on crossing a stile, I saw a figure draw back into a coppice bounding the field.  Thinking it was Roger who had been before me, I called to him, but receiving no answer, and wondering who could be abroad at that early hour—­for the men of the estate were engaged in their duties elsewhere—­I sprang down and strode off to the coppice, moved by some little curiosity.  But though I walked to and fro among the trees for some time, I saw no one, and concluding that it was probably some poacher returning home from his night’s work I went on to the bathing place, resolved to give a hint to Mr. Johnson.

Roger joined me presently, with a glum face.

“Oh, I say, Joe,” he said, “this is deuced bad news.  Father says you are leaving us on Monday.”

“Yes, I have been here long enough,” I said.

“Of course, I didn’t expect you to work here forever, but I did think you would change your mind and remain friends with me.”

“We shall always be friends, you and I, I hope,” I said, “but it will be on a different footing.  I could not work here forever, as you say:  and if I mean to do anything in the world ’tis time I set about it.  Maybe five years hence I shall return, and you will not be ashamed to own me for a friend.”

“Ashamed!  When was I ever ashamed?  Why, we think a world of you, father and mother and Lucy, too.  When father told us last night, they were sorry, yet glad, too, I own.  Mother said she was sure you would get on, and I know you will, but all the same I wish you were not going.  I say, tell me your real name, and if you have a bother with your people I’ll go and see them, I swear I will, and persuade ’em to forgive you.”

How surprised he would have been, I thought, if I had told him that the people whom I had not wronged, but who had done me wrong, were relatives of his own!  But I would not tell him, and when we had finished our swim and were returning to the house, he declared that he also would leave home; there was no fun in being a yeoman, he said:  and if a fellow like Dick Cludde could be an officer in the king’s navy, so could he—­or in the army, and he would persuade his father to let him go, by George he would!  And he asked me to write to him, so that he might know where to find me when his great plan came to execution.

On Monday morning at half-past seven, after a good breakfast, I was at the gate, girt and equipped for my journey.  The poachers’ garments had, of course, long been discarded, and I was clad in the suit of serviceable homespun obtained for me from Bridgenorth in the first days of my service, and now but little the worse for wear.  All the family was at the gate to bid me farewell, even Mistress Lucy, in her riding habit, for she was wont to go for an hour’s canter on fine mornings, before breakfast at half-past eight.  The adieux were said; all wished me well; Mr. Allardyce, as a parting shot, said that I should always find a job on his estate if I fell in with more poachers, or if my fortunes at Bristowe did not turn out to my liking; and then, my heart warm with their kindness, I set off up the road.