1828.] The Mole-Catcher. 367 



honey is celebrated far and near ; a pig occupies a commodious stye at 

 one corner ; and large flocks of ducks and geese (for which the Penge, 

 whose glades are intersected by water, is famous) are generally waiting 

 round a back gate leading to a spacious shed, far larger than Isaac's own 

 cottage, which serves for their feeding and roosting-place. The great 

 tameness of all these creatures for the ducks and geese flutter round 

 him the moment he approaches, and the very pig follows him like a 

 Jog- gives no equivocal testimony of the kindness of our mole-catcher's 

 nature. A circumstance of recent occurrence puts his humanity beyond 

 doubt. 



Amongst the probable causes of Isaac's dislike to women, may be, 

 reckoned the fact of his living in a female neighbourhood (for the Penge 

 is almost peopled with duck-rearers and goose- crammers of the duck and 

 goose gender), and being himself exceedingly unpopular amongst the 

 fair poultry-feeders of that watery vicinity. He beat them at their own 

 weapons ; produced at Midsummer geese fit for Michaelmas ; and raised 

 ducks so precocious, that the gardeners complained of them as fore-, 

 running their vegetable accompaniments ; and ' ' panting peas toiled after 

 them in vain." In short, the Naiads of the Penge had the mortification 



to find themselves driven out of B market by an interloper, and 



that interloper a man, who had no manner of right to possess any skill 

 in an accomplishment so exclusively feminine as duck-rearing ; and 

 being no ways inferior in another female accomplishment, called scolding, 

 to their sister-nymphs of Billingsgate, they sat up a clamour and a cackle 

 which might rival the din of their own gooseries at feeding-time, and 

 would inevitably have frightened from the field any competitor less 

 impenetrable than our hero. But Isaac is not a man to shrink from so 

 small an evil as female objurgation. He stalked through it all in mute 

 disdain looking now at his mole-traps, and now at the stars pretending 

 not to hear, and very probably not hearing. At first this scorn, more 

 provoking than any retort, only excited his enemies to fresh attacks; but 

 one cannot be always answering another person's silence. The flame 

 which had blazed so fiercely, at last burnt itself out, and peace reigned 

 once more in the green alleys of Penge wood. 



One, however, of his adversaries his nearest neighbour still re- 

 mained unsilenced. 



Margery Grover was a very old and poor woman, whom age and 

 disease had bent almost to the earth; shaken by palsy, pinched by 

 penury, and soured by misfortune a moving bundle of misery and 

 rags. Two centuries ago she would have been burnt for a witch ; now 

 she starved and grumbled on the parish allowance ; trying to eke out a 

 scanty subsistence by the dubious profits gained from the produce of two 

 geese and a lame gander, once the unmolested tenants of a greenish pool, 

 situate right between her dwelling and Isaac's, but whose watery domi- 

 nion had been invaded by his flourishing colony. 



This was the cause of feud ; and although Isaac would willingly, from 

 a mingled sense of justice and of pity, have yielded the point to the poor 

 old creature, especially as ponds are there almost as plentiful as black, 

 berries, yet it was not so easy to control the habits and inclinations of 

 their feathered subjects, who all perversely fancied that particular pool ; 

 and various accidents and skirmishes occurred, in which the ill-fed and 

 weak birds of Margery had generally the worst of the fray. One of her 

 early goslings was drowned an accident which may happen even to 

 water-fowl ; and her lame gander, a sort of pet with the poor old woman, 



