244 ^y Last Day in the Fen, 



intended, and right glad was I when I pulled up at the door of his rude 

 hostel, and, giving my horse in charge of an antediluvian ostler, 

 whose whole appearance was in perfect keeping with the locality, I 

 made my way into the kitchen of the inn (the bar-parlour of this 

 sporting snuggery), attracted by the blazing light on the open 

 hearth, contrasting well with the gloomy landscape I was leaving 

 outside. A glance round the room at once discovered the owner's 

 calling, and another at the chimney-corner showed me the owner 

 himself. Two or three lumbering, huge punt-guns, all upon the 

 flint-and-sieel principle, hung from the rafters 3 a crazy hand-gun 

 for stopping the cripples stood in one corner ; while sprits, stalking- 

 poles, and setting-sticks, nets of every variety, and huge water-boots 

 were stowed away wherever space could be found for them. 

 Seated in a venerable arm-chair (of which he seemed to form part 

 and parcel) sat our friend the host, touching up the lock of an old 

 duck-gun J and a smile played over his withered features as he rose 

 to welcome me. A small group of fen "bankers" — not of the 

 Lombard-street genus, but rough hirsute navvies, in red nightcaps, 

 mud-stained frocks, worsteds, and highlows — who were seated 

 round a small deal table, deep in the mysteries of '' High, low, 

 jack, and the game," made way for me with a rough but genuine 

 civility J and ''Come, wont you drink with us, master," carried 

 with it a well-meant and hearty welcome. 



The king of the fen gunners now stood before me, nearly 

 seventy years of age, short, but compactly built, his old weather- 

 beaten face something resembling the colour of the turf sods that 

 lay on his hearth. The few scant sQvery locks combed over his 

 wrinkled forehead plainly told that he had reached the period of 

 years usually allotted to n^an j yet the active motion, the spare, 

 erect figure, and above all tbe bright grey eye, also as plainly told 

 that the hand of time had dealt lightly with him. Bred in the fen, 

 his whole hfe had been spent in its solitudes, and his whole httle 

 world centred in this rude spot. Rarely, indeed, did he visit the 

 haunts of his fellow men, except when the autumn floods drove the 

 birds into the uplands, and he made certain periodical trips up the 



