His poaching, besides a means of livelihood, became more and more a silent duel between him and his boyhood's tyrant.
And now, after seven months of regular field-work and respectable living, it was all to begin again with the new winter! The same shudders and terrors, the same shames before the gentry and Mr.Harden!--the soft, timid woman with her conscience could not endure the prospect.

For some weeks after the harvest was over she struggled.

He had begun to go out again at nights.

But she drove him to look for employment, and lived in tears when he failed.
As for him, she knew that he was glad to fail; there was a certain ease and jauntiness in his air to-night as he stood calling the children: "Will!--you come in at once! Daisy!--Nellie!" Two little figures came pattering up the street in the moist October dusk, a third, panted behind.

The girls ran in to their mother chattering and laughing.