`You and your brother can go back now. Never say I kept you
against your will. You may as well lend a hand to brand these calves;
then you may clear out as soon as you like.'

Well, I didn't quite like leaving the old chap in the middle of the work
like that. I remember thinking, like many another young fool, I suppose,
that I could draw back in time, just after I'd tackled this job.

Draw back, indeed! When does a man ever get the chance of doing that,
once he's regularly gone in for any of the devil's work and wages?
He takes care there isn't much drawing back afterwards. So I said --

`We may as well give you a hand with this lot; but we'll go home then,
and drop all this duffing work. It don't pay. I'm old enough to know that,
and you'll find it out yet, I expect, father, yourself.'

`The fox lives long, and gives the hounds many a long chase
before he's run into,' he said, with a grim chuckle. `I swore I'd be
revenged on 'em all when they locked me up and sent me out here
for a paltry hare; broke my old mother's heart, so it did. I've had a pound
for every hair in her skin, and I shall go on till I die. After all,
if a man goes to work cautious and runs mute it's not so easy to catch him
in this country, at any rate.'

Jim at this came running out of the cave with a face of joy,
a bag of ship-biscuit, and a lot of other things.

`Here's tea and sugar,' he said; `and there's biscuits and jam,
and a big lump of cheese. Get the fire right, Dick, while I get some water.
We'll soon have some tea, and these biscuits are jolly.'