the east wind cutting into you, and get inside they firs and you’ll feel warm in a minute. If you goes into the ash wood you must go in farther, because the wind comes more between the poles.’ Fresh air, exercise, frugal food and drink, the odour of the earth and the trees—these have given him, as he nears his sixtieth year, the strength and vitality of early manhood.

He has his faults: notably, a hastiness of temper towards his undermen, and towards labourers and wood-cutters who transgress his rules. He is apt to use his ground-ash stick rather freely without thought of consequences, and has got into trouble more than once in that way. When he takes a dislike or suspicion of a man, nothing will remove it; he is stubbornly inimical and unforgiving, totally incapable of comprehending the idea of loving an enemy. He hates cordially in the true pagan fashion of old. He is full of prejudices, and has some ideas which almost amount to superstitions; and, though he fears nothing, has a vague feeling that sometimes there is ‘summat’ inexplicable in the dark and desolate places. Such is this modern man of the woods.

The impressions of youth are always strongest with us, and so it is that recollecting the scenes in which he passed his earlier days he looks with some contempt upon the style of agriculture followed in the locality; for he was born in the north, where the farms are sometimes of a great area, though perhaps not so rich in soil, and he cannot forgive the tenants here because they have not got herds of three or four hundred horned cattle. Before he settled down in the south he had many changes of situation, and was thus brought in contact with a wonderful number of gentlemen, titled or otherwise distinguished, whose peculiarities of speech or appearance he loves to dwell upon. If the valet sees the hero or the statesman too closely, so sometimes does the gamekeeper. A great man must have moments when it is a relief to fling off the constant posturing necessary before the world; and there is freshness in the gamekeeper’s unstudied conversation. The keeper thinks that nothing reveals a gentleman’s character so much as his ‘tips.’

‘Gentlemen is very curious in tips,’ he says, ‘and there ain’t nothing so difficult as to know what’s coming. Most in general them as be the biggest guns, and what you would think would come out handsome, chucks you a crown and no more; and them as you knows ain’t much go in the way of money slips a sovereign into your fist. There’s a deal in the way of giving it too, as perhaps you wouldn’t think. Some gents does it as much as to say they’re much obliged to you for kindly taking it. Some does it as if they were chucking a bone to a dog. One place where I was, the governor were the haughtiest man as ever you see. When the shooting was done—after a great party, you never knowed whether he were pleased or not—he never took no more notice of you than if you were a tree. But I found him out arter a time or two. You had to walk close behind him, as if you were a spaniel; and by-and-by he would slip his hand round behind his back—without a word, mind—and you had to take what was in it, and never touch your hat or so much as “Thank you, sir.” It were always a five-pound note if the shooting had been good; but it never seemed to come so sweet as if he’d done it to your face.’

The keeper gets a goodly number of tips in the course of the year, from visitors at the great house, from naturalists who come now and then, from the sportsmen, and regularly from the masters of three packs of hounds; not to mention odd moneys at intervals in various ways, as when he goes round to deliver presents of game to the chief tenants on the estate or to the owner’s private friends. Gentlemen who take an interest in such things come out every spring to see the young broods of pheasants—which, indeed, are a pretty sight—and they always leave something

A BROOD OF YOUNG PHEASANTS.

behind them. In the summer a few picnic parties come from the town or the country round about, having permission to enter the grounds. In the winter half a dozen young gentlemen have a turn at the ferreting; a great burrow is chosen, three or four ferrets put in at once without any nets, so that the rabbits may bolt freely, and then the shooting is like volleys of musketry fire. For sport like this the young gentlemen tip freely. After the rook-shooting party in the spring from the great house, with their rook-rifles and sometimes crossbows, have had the pick of the young birds, some few of the tenants are admitted to shoot the remainder—a task that spreads perhaps over two or even three days, and there is a good deal of liquor and silver going about. Then gentlemen come to fish in the mere, having got the necessary permission, and they want bait and some attention, which the keeper’s lad, being an adept himself, can render better than any one else; and so he too gets his share. Besides which, being swift of foot, and with a shrewd idea which way the fox will run when the hunt is up, he is to the fore when a lady or some timid gentleman wants a gate opened—a service not performed in vain. For breaking-in dogs also the keeper is often paid well; and, in short, he is one of those fortunate individuals whom all the world tips.

CHAPTER II.