Then he released the others as gently as he could.  Their dew-draggled bodies felt cold and limp and the wire had bitten deep into the swollen flesh.  Two, however, feebly crawled away and he carried another to the mouth of a burrow, after which he wiped the dew and blood from his hands, while his lips set in a firm line.  He hoped he was not a sentimentalist, and admitted that man must kill to eat; moreover he had used the rifle in the Northern wilds.  Once a hungry cinnamon bear had raided the camp, and he remembered a certain big bull moose.  That was clean sport, for a man who faced such antagonists must shoot quick and straight, but this torturing of small defenseless creatures revolted him.  Still he admitted that it might not have done so quite so much but for the pain it caused the girl.

Helen glanced at him with some surprise when he went back to the fence.  She had not seen him look like that.

“I’ve let them go, but two or three are dead,” he remarked.  “I suppose they’ve been lying there all night.”

“I’m afraid so.  They come out to feed at dusk.  It’s horribly cruel.”

“It’s devilish!  Why don’t you stop it?  Is the field yours?”

“It goes with the house, and when we let the grazing I stipulated that no snares should be laid, but there was some mistake and the tenant claimed the rabbits.  We said he could shoot them, and I understand he’s disputing with the agent.  But where are you going?”

“I’m going back to finish the job; these particular snares won’t be used again.  If you like, I’ll come over every evening and pull the blamed things up.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Helen answered with a strained laugh.

She felt disturbed and excited when Festing turned away.  Her life had been smooth and she did not think she had seen a man seized by savage anger; certainly not a man she knew.  Festing was angry, and no doubt justly, but at the Scar the primitive vein in human nature was decently hidden.  Now she did not know if she were jarred or not.  Then she heard voices, and going nearer the fence, tried to see through the briars.

Festing, with a pocket-knife and some brass wire in his hand, confronted a big slouching man who carried a heavy stick and a net bag.  Bits of fur stuck to the fellow’s clothes and there was blood on his dirty hands.  A half-grown lad with another stick waited, rather uneasily, in the background.

“What might you be doing?” the man inquired.

“I’m cutting up your snares,” Festing replied.  “What have you got to say about it?”

The other gave him a slow, sullen look.  “Only that you’d better leave the snares alone.  How many rabbits?”

“Four,” said Festing, pulling up another snare and cutting the noose.

“Then that will be five shillings.  I’ll say nothing about the snares; wire’s cheap.”

Festing laughed.  “It’s a dead bluff.  Light out of this field before I put you off.”