Poachers 219 



be carried too far, he turned with a face of demure 

 simplicity, and said, ' Poaching, did you say ? Odd, I 

 had forgotten about it looking at them bonny picters. 

 Well, I'm here to answer you. But could that leddy 

 in the bonny dress,' pointing to the handsomest face 

 on the walls, ' be your mother, sir ? Dod, she's awful 

 like you.' It was of no use. The catechism was 

 given up in despair. With a solemn warning and a 

 horn of beer Sodger Whiff was sent back scatheless. 



A WINTERS TALE 



IN the straggling, forlorn, unbeautiful Northumbrian 

 village of Blackford there was, half a century ago, 

 only one comfortable-looking building. It was none 

 of the dwellings of the coal and lime carters, the 

 hedgers and ditchers, or the drainers, who formed the 

 bulk of the population ; for the low, drooping roofs of 

 their cottages, mended here and there with tarpaulin, 

 spoke too eloquently of damp, draught, and over-pres- 

 sure ; it was not the red-tiled croft-house inhabited by 

 Willie Allan, the clever, lazy, kindly, cock-fighting, 

 dog-fancying, boxing, wrestling, swimming, bee- 

 keeping tenant of the little farm, for bachelordom and 

 neglect had combined with Willie's devotion and 

 hobbies of one kind and another to create of it and its 

 surroundings an embodiment of picturesque disorder ; 

 it was not the great austere-looking square-built 



