Time sped swiftly for the young miner and his sweetheart, and Daniel told his friend Prowse, as a piece of extraordinary information, that he had killed nothing that ran, or swam, or flew, for the space of three weeks. Seeing that these innocent days formed part of the month of September, the greatness of the occasion may be judged. Every moment of the man’s leisure was spent at Hangman’s Hut; and once he took a whole holiday and went with Minnie to Plymouth, that he might spend ten pounds on furniture. He also purchased a ready-made suit of grey cloth spotted with yellow, which seemed well adapted for his wedding day. It proved too small in the back, but Daniel insisted on buying it, and Minnie promised to let out the shoulders.

Then came the night before his wedding, and the young man looked round his new home and reflected that he would not enter it again until he came with a wife on his arm. Mrs Beer had proved of precious worth during these preparations, and now all was ready. Even the little evening meal that would greet Minnie on her arrival had been prepared. A cold tongue, a cold fowl, two big red lettuces from Johnny Beer’s garden, cakes, a bottle of pale ale, and other delicacies were laid in. Groceries and stores had been secured; and many small matters destined to surprise and delight the housewife were in their places; for, unknown to Minnie, Daniel had spent five pounds—the gift of his mother—and the money represented numerous useful household contrivances.

It began to grow dusk when young Sweetland’s work was done. Then the ruling passion had play with him and an enterprise long since planned occupied his attention for the rest of his last bachelor night. It was now October.

“A brace of pheasants would look mighty fine in Minnie’s larder,” thought Dan, “an’ there they shall be afore I go home to-night.”

He had some vague idea of giving up his dishonest sport after marriage, but in his heart he knew that no such thing would happen.

Much talk of poaching was in the air at Moretonhampstead about this season, and raids and rumours of raids at Middlecott and elsewhere kept the keepers anxious and wakeful; but no sensation marked the opening of the season, though Matthew Sweetland had secret troubles which he only imparted to his second in command, a young and zealous man called Adam Thorpe. Birds had gone and there were marks in the preserves that told ugly tales to skilled eyes; but Sweetland failed to bring the evil-doers to justice, and a cloud presently rose between his subordinate and himself. For Thorpe did not hesitate to declare that the headkeeper’s own son was responsible. With all his soul Daniel’s father resented this suspicion, and yet too well he knew the other had just grounds for it. Once only the father taxed Daniel, and the younger man fell into a rage and reminded old Sweetland how, long ago, he had sworn upon his oath never to enter Middlecott preserves.

“You ought to know me better than think it,” he said bitterly. “Be I what I may, you’ve no just right to hold me an oath-breaker; an’ if I meet that blustering fool, Thorpe, I’ll mark him so’s he’ll carry my anger to the grave. Any fool could hoodwink him. He walks by night like an elephant. There’s no fun in taking Middlecott pheasants. Anyway I never have, an’ never will.”

But the preserves at Westcombe, Daniel regarded differently. They extended under Hameldon on the skirt of the Moor; and this night he meant to visit them and kill a bird or two. The moon would rise presently, and he knew where the pheasants roosted quite as well as the keeper who had bred them.

In the one spare room of Hangman’s Hut were possessions of the young couple not yet arranged. Here stood the two little tin boxes that held all Minnie’s possessions; and various parcels and packages belonging to Daniel were also piled together in the chamber. A certain square wooden case was locked, and now, lighting a candle and pulling down the window-blind, Dan opened it. Not a few highly suspicious objects appeared. There were nets and wires here, with night-lines and a variety of mysterious things whose uses were known to the owner only. None other had ever set eyes upon them. A long black weapon of heavy metal lay at the bottom of the box, and this the poacher drew forth. Then he oiled it, pumped it, and loaded it. The thing was an air gun, powerful enough to destroy ground game at fifty yards. For a moment, however, Dan hesitated between this engine and another. Among his property was a neat yellow leather case with D.S. painted in black letters upon it. Within reposed the gun that Henry Vivian had given his friend as a wedding present.

The owner hesitated between these weapons. His inclination was towards the fowling-piece; his instinct turned him to the silent air-gun.

“Two shots at most, then a bolt,” he reflected. “Anyway, there won’t be a soul that side to-night, for Wilkins and the others at Westcombe will all be down on the lower side, where they are having a battoo to-morrow. So I’ll chance it.”

He broke open a box of cartridges, loaded the gun, and then left Hangman’s Hut, locking the door behind him.

Westcombe lay midway between Middlecott and the Moor. Of old there had existed great rivalry between the houses of Vivian and Giffard as to their game, but for many years the first-named estates produced heavier bags, and, after the death of Sir George Giffard, Westcombe went steadily down, for Sir George’s son and heir had little love of sport. Old Lady Giffard, however, still dwelt at Westcombe, and rejoiced to entertain the decreasing numbers of her late husband’s friends. A shooting party was now collected at the old house, and a big battue had been planned for the following day.

“’Twould keep any but Mister Henry away from my wedding,” thought Daniel. “Of course not one man in a million would put another chap’s wedding afore a battoo. I wouldn’t. But he will. ’Tis an awful fine thing never to break your word, no doubt. You can trust that man like you can the sun.”

The young poacher pursued his way without incident and sank into the underwoods of Westcombe as the moon rose. He waited an hour hidden within ten yards of the keepers’ path, but silence reigned in the forest, and only the faint tinkle of frost under white moonlight reached his ear. Once or twice an uneasy cry or flutter from a bird that felt the gathering cold fell upon the night; and once, far away, Dan’s ears marked gun-fire. The sound interested him exceedingly, for it certainly meant that somebody else was engaged upon his own rascally business. Long he listened, and presently other shots in quick succession clearly echoed across the peace of the hour. They were remote, but they came from Middlecott, as Daniel well knew.

“’Tis Thorpe an’ my father for sartain,” he said to himself. “Well, I hope father haven’t met with no hurt to keep him away from my wedding.”

Now Dan turned his attention to his own affairs and was soon in the coverts. He crept slowly through the brushwood and lifted his head cautiously at every few steps. Often for five minutes together he remained motionless as the dead fern in which he stood, often he might have been a stock or stone, so still was he. Only the light in his eyes or the faint puff of steam at his lips indicated that he was alive. The pheasants slept snug aloft, and Dan heard a fox bark near him and smiled.

“You’m wanting your supper, my red hero, no doubt, an’ can’t reach it. Well, well, you’ll have to go content wi’ a rabbit; the long-tails be for your betters.”

He had crossed a drive ten minutes later and was now in the midst of the preserves. Presently, at a spinney edge, he got the moon between himself and the fringe of the wood, and sneaked stealthily along examining the boughs above him as they were thrown into inky relief against the shining sky. Many birds he passed until at length he came to two sitting near together. Then, working to a point from which one bird came half into line with the other, he fired and dropped both. Like thunder the gun bellowed in that deep silence, and a lurid flame dimmed the silver of the night. Then peace returned, and long before a flat layer of smoke had risen above the tree-tops and dislimned under the moon; while still a subdued flutter and cry in the woods told of alarm, and the sharp smell of burnt powder hung in the air, Daniel Sweetland was off the Moor with two fine pheasants under his coat and his gun on his shoulder.

A mile away three keepers, watching round the best and richest covers of Westcombe, heard the poacher’s gun and used bad language. Then two started whence the sound had come.

“I’ve christened you, anyway,” said Dan to his new weapon. “Come to think of it, old Wilkins, the keeper at Westcombe, never gived my Minnie a wedding present, though a cousin by marriage. So now these here birds will do very nice instead, an’ make us quits.”

Within the hour he was back in the Moor and soon returned to his cottage. But a surprise awaited him, for upon the high road, as he passed the Warren Inn and prepared to turn off to where Hangman’s Hut lay, with its two little windows glimmering like eyes under the moon, Daniel heard steady feet running slowly behind him and saw a man approaching along the way. Dan leapt off the high road instantly and hid himself beside the path. But the other apparently had not seen him, for he trotted past and went forward. Daniel left his hiding-place just in time to see a man vanishing into the night.

No little remained to be done before he sought the room he occupied in his father’s house at Middlecott lodge gates. First he returned to Hangman’s Hut; then he put up his gun and, taking a hammer, a big nail, and a piece of string, entered his garden and lifted the cover off a little well that stood there. He then bent over it and drove in his nail as far down as he could reach from the top. Next he fastened his pheasants to the string and lowered them twenty-five yards into the gloom beneath. The string he fastened to the nail.

“They’ll do very nice an’ comfortable there till us feel to want ’em,” he thought. Then he locked up the house once more and started for Middlecott.

Again, as he passed over the Moor to the main road, did he hear the sound of feet not far off, and again did a man take shape out of the darkness and move away before him. This time the figure leapt up out of the heath right in his path, and hastened in the direction of Hangman’s Hut.

“Be blessed if the whole parish ban’t up an’ doing to-night!” laughed Daniel. “’Tis some blackguard trapping Johnny Beer’s rabbits, I lay.”

Then he set off briskly homewards and did not stop until he passed the corner of Westcombe woods and saw two men standing together at the stile over which he had himself crept some hours before.

“Seen anybody upalong, mate?” asked one.

“Yes, I did,” answered Daniel. “A chap in a hurry, too—running for his life.”

“You be Dan Sweetland!” cried the other man. “Did you hear a gun fire awhile back, Sweetland?”

“I heard several,” replied the young man. “They’ve been busy down to Middlecott, or I’m mistaken. For my part, I wish I’d been there; but I wasn’t. Too much on my hands, you see, to trouble about sporting. I’m going to be married to-morrow; an’ you can tell your old man, Wilkins, that my sweetheart was rather astonished he didn’t give her a wedding present—him being related by marriage.”

The keepers laughed. Both felt morally certain that Daniel had fired the shot which brought them from the distant woods; both knew that to prove it would be impossible.

“An’ I dare say there’ll be a nice pheasant for supper to-morrow night at Hangman’s Hut—eh, Dan?” asked one.

“Oh, no, there won’t, Jack Bates. I like my game hung a bit, same as the quality do. If you’ll come to supper this day week, I’ll see what I can do for ’e.”

The keepers laughed again, and Sweetland went his way.

At home yet another surprise awaited him. His father’s cottage flamed with lights. Instead of silence and sleep brooding here, with the glimmering leaden statues standing like sentinels above, as he had often seen them on returning from nocturnal enterprises, Dan found his father’s cottage awake and full of stir and bustle. The door was open and from the kitchen came Matthew’s voice.

When Dan entered Mr Sweetland was sitting in an old eared chair by the fire in his nightshirt. A red nightcap covered his head, and his person was largely exposed, where Mrs Sweetland applied vinegar and brown paper to red bruises. The keeper evidently endured great agony, but no sign of suffering escaped his lips.

He turned to Dan and spoke.

“Be that you? Where was you this night, Daniel?”

“Not in Middlecott Woods, father; that I’ll swear to. But I’m feared that you was—to poor purpose. Have ’e catched anybody?”

“No; but Adam Thorpe was hit an’ went down. Me an’ him have long knowed what was doing, an’ we gived it out at the White Hart bar in mixed company that we was to be in Thorley Bottom to-night. Then we went to the coverts instead, an’, sure enough, surprised my gentlemen. Two of ’em. They fired two shots, an’ we laid wait an’ went for ’em as they came out wi’ birds. I got one down an’ he bested me. What he’ve broken, if anything, I can’t say. T’other fired on Thorpe an’ he couldn’t get up. Afterwards, when they’d got clear, I found he was alive but couldn’t speak. Then I crawled to the house, an’ some of the gentlemen and a indoor man or two comed out. ’Twas only eleven of the clock at latest. They carried Thorpe to the cottage hospital at Moreton, an’ sent me home. Us’ll hear to-morrow how he fares, poor soul.”

“I knowed he’d catch it sooner or late,” said Dan. “Such a cross-grained bully as him. But I hope ’twill larn him wisdom. An’ you. Be you hurt in the breathing? Will ’e be at my wedding to-morrow? It shall be put off if you can’t come.”

“’Tis all right if you can swear you had no hand in this. That’s the best plaster to my bruises,” answered his father.

“Of course I can. Why for won’t you trust me? I know nought about it—God’s my judge.”

“Then you’d better get to your bed an’ sleep,” said his mother.

“All’s done at the Hut,” he answered, “an’ the carriage be ordered. After us be married, we’ll walk over to Minnie’s aunt an’ have the spread as the old woman have arranged; then we’ll drive straight away off to the Moor. An’ if ’tis wet weather, us be going to have a covered cab; for I won’t have Minnie drowned on her wedding-day. Please God, you’ll be up to coming to church, father.”

“I shall be there,” said Matthew—“there an’ glad to be there, since you wasn’t doing any harm this night. But Mr Henry may not come. I had speech with him, for the gentlemen hadn’t gone to bed. Sir Reginald’s in a proper fury. They’ll leave no stone unturned to take the rascals. My man won’t travel far, I should reckon, for I gived him quite as good as I got, maybe better.”

“You’ve got enough anyway,” declared the keeper’s wife. “Now lean on Dan an’ me, an’ we’ll fetch ’e up to your chamber.”

Without a groan Matthew Sweetland let them help him to his bed; but not until dawn did the pain of his bruises lessen and suffer him to sleep.