CHAPTER VI.

THE VILLAGE SCAMP,

HERE were a good many scampish boys and

THE

hobbydehoys in Samplestead, but the scamp of the village was Black Bob.

Bob was a long, lithe, gipsy-like young fellow, who was almost always getting into scrapes, and so got the credit, or rather the discredit, of even more scampishness than he was guilty of. When anything wrong had been done, Black Bob was always the first person suspected; and if it turned out that somebody else had actually done the wrong, Black Bob, nevertheless, was still believed to have been "at the bottom of it."

"That chap worn't born to be drownded," the steady-going Samplestead people used to say of him, slowly shaking their sage heads. "Theer's a hemp neckercher waitin' for him somewheers."

Even the scampish Samplestead people were shy of being seen much in Black Bob's company. He was "sich a owdacious out-an'-outer," they said, "theer was no knowin' what he might be up to next, and the quality and the keepers 'ud be sure to be down on them as they see last with un."

The only friend Black Bob had in the parish was the old grandmother who had brought him up when his father was transported for the manslaughter of a gamekeeper, and his mother had died leaving him quite a baby. Bob's grandmother had not brought him up very wisely. She had not sent him to school, but had let him run as wild as a young marsh-colt. Still, in her way, she had always been very fond of Bob, and Bob, in his rough way, was very fond of her.

Although the Samplestead people thought the old woman almost as black a sheep as her grandson, and the "respectable folk" amongst them would not have darkened her door for any consideration, Hoity Toity every now and then paid a visit to her cottage. He had a liking for Black Bob and his grandmother, though they were such dis

reputable people. He had a great pity for poor Black Bob, whom no one had tried to teach to behave properly, except by punishing and scouting him for all the ill-behaviour of the parish.

The old woman was a "squatter" on a sandy, peaty waste dotted with firs and furze, fern, broom, heather, and brown bog-pools. Her cottage was a thatched hovel, half mud, half brick, with more old-hat than glass in the tiny windows, standing in a little plot of potato and cabbage ground in the loneliest part of the waste.

One sunny morning Hoity Toity, hidden in a heap of heather which she had gathered, sat watching the old woman, who was making heath-brooms outside her cottage-door.

"I wish Bob wor at home," she was muttering to herself. "He wor out agin last night, and if he goo on in that owdacious way, he'll be ketched, sure's fate. I'm allus afearin' I shall hear he's killed a chap, like his father afore un. Ah, my boy wor a man, and so's Bob; not like them sneakin' chaps that pockuts the money and gits him to run the risk. I wish Bob wor at home."

By and by Bob slouched out of a clump of firtrees, with his hands in his pockets under his smock-frock. He was chinking some money. When he came up to his grandmother, he pitched a handful of silver into her lap, saying as he did so

"Theer, granny, that 'll pay thee better than thy besoms. Now thee canst go down into the street and git thee tea and sugar and snuff."

The old woman's eyes flashed for a moment at the sight and sound of the sparkling, splashing coin; but then she said discontentedly

"Eh, lad, money's money, but this is nowt for thy week's work-riskin' thy neck to fill other chaps' pockuts. They makes pounds out o' the game, and gives thee a few shilluns."

"What's come to thee this marnin', granny?" the young poacher asked with a grin, and then, dropping on the heap of heather, began to bawl at the top of his voice

"Oh, 'tis my delight

On a shady night

In the season of the year."

"Hold thy tongue, Bob, thou fool!" cried the old woman anxiously, and yet looking half proudly at the young fellow as he lolled on the heather, trolling out his song in the quavering bellow-like the voice of a sentimentally agitated bull—which may be heard proceeding from rustic beershops on Saturday nights. "Hold thy tongue, Bob. Thee 'lt bring the keepers and the constables on thee."

"Who's afeared? Theer's nowt to show for what they'd like to lay agin me, 'cept the money. And hain't I as much right to money as them, or any man? I bain't bound to tell 'em how I got it; though, if it come to that, I arns mine honester than their'n. Hain't I a right to ketch wild things? But what right's they to try to break a man's head for arnin' his honest livin'? The sneakin' curs, they'd swear my life away, once they got the chance!"

"I know they would, Bob. That's what I'm a-spakin' to thee about. S' far as I sees, thee'st as much right to the birds and things as any man. They belongs to them as can ketch 'em, s'far as I But that bain't what the Lawer says. It's only rich folks, and them they pays, may kill the

sees.