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"Yes, I am; and I wonder what Mr. Strafford would say to me if he was to see you here, poking about in his woods, and trying to catch something as belongs to him, though if it be but a hadder! Poaching,' he would call it, I dare say. He don't allow nobody to come on to his ground if he knows it. He would give you the rough side of his tongue, I reckon, or perhaps a taste of his walking-stick."

"We shall not do any harm," said Tom.

"No; I don't think as you will," said Ayers, "but Squire Strafford is an odd sort of gentleman; very odd. I ought to know him, for I was born on the land, and have been in his service ever since. Ah, and there ain't another man about the place as can say that. He don't keep his servants many months as a rule; always changing he is, except one or two as is native to the place and don't want to leave it; and they have to put up with a deal, they have."

Martin had heard all this before. Squire Strafford was well known in the neighbourhood as a cross-grained, surly old man, mean and miserly in his habits. No one had a good word to say for him. He owned a considerable extent of land, which he kept almost entirely in his own occupation, not being able to get on long with any tenant; there were sure to be disputes about the cropping, about the game, and about the farming generally, no matter who rented it. One after another his tenants had thrown up their holdings and gone away impoverished, after having put up with their landlord's interference and oppression as long as they could for the sake of the capital they had invested; and the circumstances had at length attained such notoriety that no new tenants could be found to replace them. Squire Strafford spent most of his time in riding over his land upon a rough, half-starved pony, directing the labourers and grumbling to himself about their idleness and want of skill. He could get no good men to work for him, and

there may have been just cause for his complaints, but he did not dare to utter them aloud, lest he should be left without any workpeople at all upon his farms. His fields were but half cultivated, his homesteads were slovenly and dilapidated, his cattle were neglected and ill-fed, and he himself, weary and miserable as he went his lonely rounds, looked, and perhaps was, the most unfortunate and pitiable object of them all.

"Have you seen the old gentleman lately, Mr. Martin?" the gamekeeper asked. "He gets thinner and sharper every year, I think. I can't but feel sorry for him sometimes, with all his wealth. I would rather be as I am, with my weekly wages, and not too much of them neither, and my bit of a lodge, which I have to keep in repair with my own hands, than be like him. Ah, poor old man! Not as I need pity him, for it's his own doing, and he might be different if he would."

"Has he not got a wife or children?" Tom asked.

Never a wife living; and never a son as he knows to. He had both, but the wife died many a year gone by. He was a different man while she lived, and the son-well, the son went away somewhere, and is dead too, I suppose, by this time." "Why did he go away?" Tom asked.

"Same reason as other folks go away, most likely. Couldn't stand the old gentleman any longer. He got into a mess, too, about some money, I believe. The old gentleman kept him very short, and he did something as he ought not in consequence; so it was said. My missis could tell you more about it than I can, for she took the young squire's part against everybody, and nearly got me turned out of my place in consequence."

They had arrived by this time at the keeper's lodge, which stood at the end of the carriage drive leading up to the Hall. It was a part of the wife's duty to open the gates for carriages; but no visitors ever drove up to the Hall now, and the gate was

broken, and one of its hinges replaced with a piece of rope. The road was overgrown with grass, and the hedges on either side were choked with weeds and brambles, which straggled over half the footpath.

"If I lived here," said Tom, "I would soon trim up those hedges. I could not bear to see them in such a tangle. Why, this might be quite a pretty place if it were kept in order."

"If you lived here," said Ayers, "you would have plenty to do without that. They call me the gamekeeper; but gamekeeping is only one of my jobs, and the smallest of them. The game looks after itself pretty much. I have all the timber to see to, and no end of things besides. It is 'Hares' here, and 'Hares' there, and 'Hares' everywhere. Whenever anything is wrong on any of the farms, Hares must go and see to it; or if anything is wrong at the Hall, as there mostly is, Hares's wife must go and see to that; so there ain't much time for cutting hedges or mending gates. The missis is out now, apparently," he added, finding that the door was fastened. He walked round to the back of the house and took the key from a secret hole, in which it was usually placed at such times, and having unlocked the door, invited the two boys to enter. He had a squirrel, a stoat, and a weazel stuffed, which they were anxious to see, and young Martin had a great desire to learn the art of taxidermy, and to procure from the gamekeeper similar objects for experimenting upon.

"Stoats! weasels!" cried Hares; "as many as you like. I wish you'd take 'em all. I have got a dozen or more nailed to my back door; they are too far gone for stuffing; but when I meet with another or two you shall have them fresh."

Martin was unwilling to believe that the specimens before him were too dilapidated to be carried away, and would have taken them with him if Tom had not protested against it.

"What do you do with all the game?" Martin asked.

"Do with it? sell it, every head, rabbits as well. It all goes to market, and the old gentleman grumbles because he can't have the skins sent back to sell over again. These was the sort of tricks him and his son fell out about; always a jangling they was. The young man was of a different sort altogether. They was always a-quarrelling, them two, father and son but the son was a gentleman, and took the right side as far as ever he could, always."

"Yes, he was a gentleman, and a kind-hearted gentleman, too," said a voice behind them; "but we shall never see him again, if it's true that he's dead, as everybody says he must be." The speaker was Mrs. Ayers, returned from the Hall. I call it the 'all," she said: 'cause it always was the 'all, though it an't like a 'all at all. I thought to-day it looked more lonesome and melancholic than ever; the shutters was all shut in front, and nobody about but Mrs. Daunt, the woman as keeps house for the squire; they have got no servant again, except a gell they call Betsy, who came from a distance about a month ago, and who would like to be at home again if she could get. I've got to go up again this afternoon and help. Ah! it's poor work, and as you war a-saying, the poor lad as went away was as different from his crabby old father as these here two young gentlemen is from them there stoats and weasels."

"It seems very horrible and shocking," said Tom Howard, "that a father and his son should be always quarrelling."

"Well, sir, if you'll believe me, it would have been a deal more horrible and shocking if the son had always agreed with his father, being such as he is. I don't think the old gentleman can be right in his head to go on as he does. That's the only excuse I can make for him."

"Oh, his head's right enough," the gamekeeper said; "you may tell that when you come to reckon with him. Why, he'll

want change for a farthing, and if you can't give it him will recollect it next time. No, my lass, there's nothing wrong with his head; it an't the head that's to blame."

"Well, poor old man! whatever it is I can't help feeling sorry for him, he do look so wretched and so desperate-like. It was a cruel thing of him to turn his son out of doors-his only child, too; he has never repented of it but once, and that's always. His heart an't altogether so hard as you'd fancy. Much as he may love his money, he would give a great deal of it, I think, if he could have that son come back to him— supposing he's alive, of course, not else."

"You knew his son, didn't you?" Tom asked.

"Yes, I knowed him; he used to come here after there had been a row down yonder, and would sit in that there corner, where you are now a-sitting, and would look at me with his bright, sparkling, blue eyes, half-sad, and half-angry. I couldn't but be sorry for him; I mind well how he used to look. Bless us all!" she exclaimed, after a pause, during which she had kept her eyes riveted upon Tom's face. "It seems as if it was but yesterday. I could almost fancy you was him, sitting there and looking so unhappy along of his father's unkindness."

"Oh, don't say that!" cried Tom, moving away from the seat which had given rise to such unpleasant suggestions. Tom had a filial, if not a very tender recollection of his father, whom he had not seen for so many years; and it jarred upon his feelings to have such a comparison even hinted at.

"There again!" said the woman, speaking to herself; "deary, deary me! I have seen him flash up just like that! Twenty years agone, that was; he has been away nigh on twenty years now."

"How came he to go?" Tom asked.

"How did he come for to go?" Mrs. Ayers said, with an

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