I can depend on the Decoy being guarded by ten, Sir, can I?
for I must be off to the head-keeper's with the rest." "Yes, you can." "Then, good-by, Sir, for the present." "Now what a poor fool is that!" soliloquized the young painter, contemptuously, as the door closed upon his late companion.

"To think that I should risk my life against a poacher's on even terms! Of course, if they suffice, I shall only treat him to my knuckles; but if not--if he be a giant, or there be more than one of them--then here is a better ally than mere bone and sinew." Yorke took out of a drawer a life-preserver, made of lead and whalebone, struck with it once, to test its weight and elasticity, then slipped it into his shooting-jacket pocket.

"That will enlarge their organs of locality," said he, grimly; "they will not forget the Decoy Pond in a hurry whose heads knock against this." He made a better supper than was usual with him that night; filled his pocket-flask with brandy, and his pouch with tobacco; and then making sure that the whistle Grange had given him, and which he had hung round his neck, was within easy reach of his fingers, sallied out, well wrapped up as to his throat, and with his hands in his pockets.

If Richard Yorke was doomed not to have life made easy for him, he made it as easy as he could.

He never omitted a precaution, unless it gave him trouble to take it out of proportion to the advantage it conferred; he was never imprudent, unless the passion of the moment was too strong for him; but sometimes, unfortunately, his mere whims were in their intensity passions, and his passions, while they lasted, fits of madness.