140 THE PARTRIDGE 



freehold, engaged in one or another of fche 

 tasks he there found ready to his hand. 



Though clever at most things, Twm was not 

 a good farmer. The pastures near his farm- 

 house — ^that nestled among the trees at the 

 end of the lane beyond his '' shop " — were 

 overgrown with weeds ; the hedges even of his 

 cornfields were thickets of furze and brambles, 

 with here and there a sapling oak or ash, and 

 the gates were mere hurdles of split larch plaited 

 with branches of hazel and alder. Twm Sar's 

 most cherished possession was a breech-loading 

 gun of an obsolete French pattern that hung in 

 the roof-tree of the kitchen at the farm. The 

 old man had once been a poacher, inasmuch 

 as he had shot game without a licence. But 

 later, while he preserved his land with jealous 

 care as had been his custom in the past, and each 

 autumn fondly hoped for a few hours of leisure 

 in pursuit of game, Twm never took his gun 

 from the roof- tree except to scare the crows from 

 the corn, or a prowling fox from the hencoops in 

 the yard. It was a kind of fad, or hobby, with 

 Twm Sar that, till the bright autumn morning 

 when his work might be laid aside, wild creatures 

 such as had given him sport in his youth should 

 find on his farm safe sanctuary from human 

 foes. But when that autumn morniiig dawned, 

 Twm was too feeble to go into the fields. 



