“That’s what provokes me,” said the Senator.  “You think he’s a rascal, Mister.”

“I do.”

“And because you take upon yourself to think so you’d send him to Rufford gaol!  There was one gentleman somewhere about here told me he ought to be hung, and because I would not agree with him he got up and walked away from me at table, carrying his provisions with him.  Another man in the next field to this insulted me because I said I was going to see Goarly.  The clergyman in Dillsborough and the hotelkeepers were just as hard upon me.  But you see, Mister, that what we want to find out is whether Goarly or the Lord has the right of it in this particular case.”

“I know which has the right without any more finding out,” said Larry.  “The shortest way to his house is by the ride through the wood, Mr. Morton.  It takes you out on his land on the other side.  But I don’t think you’ll find him there.  One of my men told me that he had made himself scarce.”  Then he added as the two were going on, “I should like to have just a word with you, Mr. Morton.  I’ve been thinking of what you said, and I know it was kind.  I’ll take a month over it.  I won’t talk of selling Chowton till the end of February;—­but if I feel about it then as I do now I can’t stay.”

“That’s right, Mr. Twentyman;—­and work hard, like a man, through the month.  Go out hunting, and don’t allow yourself a moment for moping.”

“I will,” said Larry, as he retreated to the house, and then he gave directions that his horse might be ready for the morrow.

They went in through the wood, and the Senator pointed out the spot at which Bean the gamekeeper had been so insolent to him.  He could not understand, he said, why he should be treated so roughly, as these men must be aware that he had nothing to gain himself.  “If I were to go into Mickewa,” said Morton, “and interfere there with the peculiarities of the people as you have done here, it’s my belief that they’d have had the eyes out of my head long before this.”

“That only shows that you don’t know Mickewa,” said the Senator.  “Its people are the most law-abiding population on the face of the earth.”

They passed through the wood, and a couple of fields brought them to Goarly’s house.  As they approached it by the back the only live thing they saw was the old goose which had been so cruelly deprived of her companions and progeny.  The goose was waddling round the dirty pool, and there were to be seen sundry ugly signs of a poor man’s habitation, but it was not till they had knocked at the window as well as the door that Mrs. Goarly showed herself.  She remembered the Senator at once and curtseyed to him; and when Morton introduced himself she curtseyed again to the Squire of Bragton.  When Goarly was asked for she shook her head and declared that she knew nothing about him.  He had been gone, she said, for the last week, and had left no word as to whither he was going;—­ nor had he told her why.  “Has he given up his action against Lord Rufford?” asked the Senator.