gave up and ran indoors. The Boy's fine green-and-gold clothes
were torn all to pieces, and he had been welted in twenty places
with the man's bat, and scratted by the woman's nails to pieces.
He looked like a Robertsbridge hopper on a Monday morning.

'"Robin," said he, while I was trying to clean him down with a
bunch of hay, "I don't quite understand folk in housen. I went to
help that old woman, and she hit me, Robin!"

'"What else did you expect?" I said. "That was the one time
when you might have worked one of your charms, instead of
running into three times your weight."

'"I didn't think," he says. "But I caught the man one on the
head that was as good as any charm. Did you see it work, Robin?"

'"Mind your nose," I said. "Bleed it on a dockleaf - not your
sleeve, for pity's sake." I knew what the Lady Esclairmonde
would say.

'He didn't care. He was as happy as a gipsy with a stolen pony,
and the front part of his gold coat, all blood and grass stains,
looked like ancient sacrifices.

'Of course the People of the Hills laid the blame on me. The
Boy could do nothing wrong, in their eyes.

'"You are bringing him up to act and influence on folk in
housen, when you're ready to let him go," I said. "Now he's
begun to do it, why do you cry shame on me? That's no shame.