"Please, m?aster, there\'s trouble on the farm."

Reuben started out of the half-waking state into which he had fallen. It was late in the afternoon, the sunlight had gone, and a wintry twilight crept up the wall. Maude the dairy-woman was looking in at the door.

"Wot is it? Wot\'s happened?"
 
"Boorman asked me to fetch you. They\'ve had some vrother wud the young Squire, and he\'s shot a cow."

"Shot one of my cows!" and Reuben sprang to his feet. "Where woman? Where?"

"Down at Totease. He wur the wuss for liquor, I reckon."

Reuben was out of the house bare-headed, and running across the yard to the Totease meadows. He soon met a little knot of farm-hands coming towards him, with three rather guilty-looking young men.

"Wot\'s happened?" he called to Boorman.

"Only this, m?aster—Dunk and me found Mus\' Fleet a-tearing about the Glotten meadow wud two of his friends, trying to fix Radical posters on the cows—seems as they\'d r?aked up one or two o\' them old Ben the Gorilla posters wot used to be about Peasmarsh, and they\'d stuck one on Tawny and one on Cowslip, and wur fair racing the other beasts to death. Then when me and the lads c?ame up and interfere, they want to fight us—and when we t?ake h?ald of \'em, seeing as they \'pear to be a liddle the wuss for drink, why Mus\' Fleet he pulls out a liddle pistol and shoots all around, and hits poor ?ald Dumpling twice over."

"Look here, farmer," said one of the young men—"we\'re awfully sorry, and we\'ll settle with you about that cow. We were only having a rag. We\'re awfully sorry."

"Ho, indeed! I\'m glad to hear it. And you\'ll settle wud me about the cow! Wur it you who shot her, I\'d lik to know?"

"I didn\'t actually fire the pistol—but we\'re all in the same boat. Had a luncheon over at Rye to cheer ourselves up after seeing the Tory get in. We\'re awfully sorry."

"You\'ve said that afore," said Reuben.

He pondered sternly over the three young men, who[Pg 452] all looked sober enough now. As a matter of fact, Dumpling was no great loss; fifteen pounds would have paid for her. But he was not disposed to let off George Fleet so easily. Against the two other youths he bore no grudge—they were just ordinary ineffective young asses, of Radical tendencies, he noted grimly. George, however, stood on a different footing; he was the mocker of Odiam, the perpetrator of many gross and silly practical jokes at its expense. He should not escape with the mere payment of fifteen pounds, for he owed Reuben the punishment of his earlier misdeeds.

"The man as shot my cow shall answer fur it before the magistrate," he said severely.

"Look here——" cried George Fleet, and his two friends began to bid for mercy, starting with twenty pounds.

"Be a sport," pleaded one of them, when they had come to forty, "you simply can\'t hand him over to the police—his father\'s Squire of the Manor, and it would be no end of a scandal."

"I know who his f?ather is, thank\'ee," said Reuben.

Then suddenly a great, a magnificent, a triumphant idea struck him. He nearly staggered under the force of it. He was like a general who sees w............