Tom Faggus was a jovial soul, if ever there has been one, not making bones of little things, nor caring to seek evil.  There was about him such a love of genuine human nature, that if a traveller said a good thing, he would give him back his purse again.  It is true that he took people’s money more by force than fraud; and the law (being used to the inverse method) was bitterly moved against him, although he could quote precedent.  These things I do not understand; having seen so much of robbery (some legal, some illegal), that I scarcely know, as here we say, one crow’s foot from the other.  It is beyond me and above me, to discuss these subjects; and in truth I love the law right well, when it doth support me, and when I can lay it down to my liking, with prejudice to nobody.  Loyal, too, to the King am I, as behoves churchwarden; and ready to make the best of him, as he generally requires.  But after all, I could not see (until I grew much older, and came to have some property) why Tom Faggus, working hard, was called a robber and felon of great; while the King, doing nothing at all (as became his dignity), was liege-lord, and paramount owner; with everybody to thank him kindly for accepting tribute.

For the present, however, I learned nothing more as to what our cousin’s profession was; only that mother seemed frightened, and whispered to him now and then not to talk of something, because of the children being there; whereupon he always nodded with a sage expression, and applied himself to hollands.

“Now let us go and see Winnie, Jack,” he said to me after supper; “for the most part I feed her before myself; but she was so hot from the way you drove her.  Now she must be grieving for me, and I never let her grieve long.”

I was too glad to go with him, and Annie came slyly after us.  The filly was walking to and fro on the naked floor of the stable (for he would not let her have any straw, until he should make a bed for her), and without so much as a headstall on, for he would not have her fastened.  “Do you take my mare for a dog?” he had said when John Fry brought him a halter.  And now she ran to him like a child, and her great eyes shone at the lanthorn.

“Hit me, Jack, and see what she will do.  I will not let her hurt thee.”  He was rubbing her ears all the time he spoke, and she was leaning against him.  Then I made believe to strike him, and in a moment she caught me by the waistband, and lifted me clean from the ground, and was casting me down to trample upon me, when he stopped her suddenly.

“What think you of that, boy?  Have you horse or dog that would do that for you?  Ay, and more than that she will do.  If I were to whistle, by-and-by, in the tone that tells my danger, she would break this stable-door down, and rush into the room to me.  Nothing will keep her from me then, stone-wall or church-tower.  Ah, Winnie, Winnie, you little witch, we shall die together.”