“Leggo!” he muttered, twisting in Trent’s iron grasp.  “Leggo, can’t you?”

“I can, but I’m not going to,” said Trent coolly.  “At least, not till you’ve explained your presence here.  This is private property.  What are you doing on it?”

“I’m doing no harm,” growled the man sullenly.

“No?” Trent passed his free hand swiftly down the fellow’s body, feeling the bulge of his coat.  “Then what’s the meaning of those rabbits sticking out under your coat?  Now, look here, my man, I know you.  You’re Jim Brady, and it’s not the first, nor the second, time I’ve caught you poaching on my land.  But it’s the last.  Understand that?  This time the Bench shall deal with you.”

The man was silent for a moment.  Then suddenly he burst out: 

“Look here, sir, pass it over this time.  My missus is ill.  She’s mortal bad, God’s truth she is, and haven’t eaten nothing this three days past.  An’ I thought mebbe a bit o’ stewed rabbit ’ud tempt ’er.”

“Pshaw!” Trent was beginning contemptuously, when Sara leaned forward, peering into the poacher’s face.

“Why,” she exclaimed.  “It’s Brady—­Black Brady from Fallowdene.”

Ne’er-do-well as he was, the mere fact that he came from Fallowdene warmed her heart towards him.

“Yes, miss, that’s so,” he answered readily.  “And you’re the young lady what used to live at Barrow Court.”

“Do you know this man?” Trent asked her.

“’Bout as well as you do, sir,” volunteered Brady with an impudent grin.  “Catched me poachin’ one morning.  Fired me gun at ’er, too, I did, to frighten ’er,” he continued reminiscently.  “And she never blinked.  You’re a good-plucked ’un, miss,”—­with frank admiration.

Sara looked at the man doubtfully.

“I didn’t know you lived here,” she said.

“It’s my native village, miss, Monks’aven is.  But I didn’t think ’twas too ’healthy for me down here, back along”—­grinning—­“so I shifted to Fallowdene, where me grandmother lives.  I came back here to marry Bessie Windrake’ she’ve stuck to me like a straight ’un.  But I didn’t mean to get collared poachin’ again.  Me and Bess was goin’ to live respectable.  ‘Twas her bein’ ill and me out of work w’at did it.”

“Let him go,” said Sara, appealing to Trent.  But he shook his head.

“I can’t do that,” he answered with decision.

“Not ’im, miss, ’e won’t,” broke in Brady. “’E’s not the soft-’earted kind, isn’t Mr. Trent.”

Trent’s brows drew together ominously.

“You won’t mend matters by impudence, Brady,” he said sharply.  “Get along now”—­releasing his hold of the man’s arm—­“but you’ll hear of this again.”

Brady shot away into the darkness like an arrow, probably chortling to himself that his captor had omitted to relieve him of the brace of rabbits he had poached; and Sara, turning again to Trent, renewed her plea for clemency.