At another there was the blank suffering face of his father before his eyes, seeming to ask him to revenge his injuries and to bring a scoundrel to justice.
For a time Dick was quite determined; but directly after there came before him the face of poor, kind-hearted Mrs Tallington, who had always treated him with the greatest hospitality, while, as he seemed to look at her eyes pleading upon her husband's behalf, Tom took his hand and wrung it.
"I'm going to stick by you, Dick," he said; "and you and I are going to find out who did this, and when we do we'll show him what it is to shoot at people, and burn people's homesteads, and hough their beasts." Dick gazed at him wildly.

Tom going to help him run his own father down and condemn him by giving evidence when it was all found out! Impossible! Those words of his old companion completely disarmed him for the moment, and to finish his discomfiture, just then Farmer Tallington came out of the cottage looking whiter and more haggard than before.
He came to where the wheelwright was standing, and spoke huskily.
"I can't bear it," he said.

"It is too horrible.

Might hev been me, and what would my poor lass do?
Hickathrift, mun, the villain who does all this must be found out." "Ay, farmer, but how ?" "I don't know how," said the farmer, gazing from one to the other.

"I on'y know it must be done.