"Miss Grace,"--her beauty always awed the poacher, and his rugged
Caliban spirit bowed in reverence before her Ariel soul--"I wish I was
as good as you, but can't be: don't condemn us, Grace; leastways, first
hear me, and then say where's the harm or sin on it. Twelve hundred head
o' game--I heard John Gorse, the keeper, tell it at the Jerry--twelve
hundred head were shot at t'other day's battew: Sir John--no blame to
him for it--killed a couple o' hundred to his own gun: and though they
sent away a coachful, and gave to all who asked, and feasted themselves
chuckfull, and fed the cats, and all, still a mound, like a haycock, o'
them fine fat fowl, rotted in a mass, and were flung upon the dungpit.
Now, Miss Grace, that ere salt pea-porridge a'n't nice, a'n't wholesome;
and, bless your pretty mouth, it ought to feed more sweetly. Look at
Acton, isn't he half-starved. Is Tom, brave boy, full o' the fat o' the
land? Who made fowl, I should like to know, and us to eat 'em? And
where's the harm or sin in bringing down a bird? No, Miss, them ere
beaks, dammem (beg humble pardon, Miss, indeed I won't again) them ere
justices, as they call themselves, makes hard laws to hedge about their
own pleasures; and if the poor man starves, he starves; but if he stays
his hunger with the free, wild birds of heaven, they prison him and
punish him, and call him poacher."

"Ben, those who make the laws, do so under God's permission; and they
who break man's law, break His law."

"Nonsense, child,"--suddenly said Roger; "hold your silly tongue. Do
you mean to tell us, God's law and man's law are the same thing! No,
Grace, I can't stomach that; God makes right, and man makes
might--riches go one way, and poor men's wrong's another. Money, money's
the great law-maker, and a full purse frees him that has it, while it
turns the jailor's key on the wretch that has it not: one of those