“A nice sort of thing religion is, to get out of the mire yourself and spend your time kicking your old friends further in!”

Now the fugitive had been never a friend to Toyner, except in the sense that he had done more than any one else to lead him into low habits and keep him there.  He had, in fact, been his greatest enemy; but that, according to Toyner’s new notions, was the more reason for counting him a friend, not the less.

“Well, I grant ’tain’t a very grand sort of business being constable,” he said; “to be a preacher ’ud be finer perhaps; but this came to hand and seemed the thing for me to do.  It ain’t kicking men in the mire to do all you can to stop them making beasts of themselves.”

He stood idling in the moonlight as he justified himself to this woman.  Surely it was only standing by his new colours to try to make his position seem right to her.  He had no hope in it—­no hope of persuading her, least of all of bringing her nearer to him; if he had had that, his dallying would have seemed sinful, because it would have chimed so perfectly with all his natural desires.

Ann took up her theme again fiercely.  “Look here, Bart Toyner; I want to know one thing, honour bright—­that is,” scornfully, “if you care about honour now that you’ve got religion.”

He gave a silent sarcastic smile, such as one would bestow upon a naughty, ignorant child.  “Well, at least as much as I did before,” he said.

“Well, then, I want to know if you’re a-going to stop spying on me now that father has got well off?  There ain’t no cause nor reason for you to hang about me any longer.  You know what my life has been, and you know that through it all I’ve kept myself like a lady.  It ain’t nice, knowing as people do that you came courting once, ’tain’t nice to have you hanging round in this way.”

He knew quite well that the reason she gave for objecting to his spying was not the true one.  He had enough insight into her character, enough knowledge of her manner and the modulations in her voice, to have a pretty true instinct as to when she was lying and when she was not; but he did not know that the allusion to the time when he used to court her was thrown out to produce just what it did in him, a tender recollection of his old hopes.

“Until Markham is arrested, you know, and every one else at Fentown knows, that it is my duty to see that you don’t communicate with him.  You’ve fooled me to-night, and I’ll have to keep closer watch; but if you don’t want me to do the watching, I can pay another man.”

She had hoped faintly that he would have shown himself less resolute; now there was only one thing to be done.  After all, she had known for days that she might be obliged to do it.

“I wouldn’t take it so hard, Bart, if it was any one but you,” she said softly.  She went on to say other things of this sort which would make it appear that there was in her heart an inward softness toward him which she had never yet revealed.  With womanly instinct she played her little part well and did not exaggerate; but she was not speaking now to the man of drug-weakened mind and over-stimulated sense whom she had known in former years.