290 The Leather Plater, 



peculiarly neat hunting saddle and martingale still on him (the 

 girths having been slackened), was going in at a feed of corn with 

 apparent relish. I did not, however, take much notice of this, for 

 I naturally concluded that he belonged to some one or other who 

 had been out that day with the hounds, and had called to refresh 

 himself and his horse at the Five Bells on his road home from 

 hunting. 



I followed the landlord into the house, and in passing through the 

 kitchen, where I stopped to order a rasher or two of bacon and 

 some poached eggs, I had time to observe the company who sat 

 smoking round the fire — and a more villanous lot of scoundrels I 

 never clapped eyes on. Poacher and sheepstealer were as unmis- 

 takably branded on every countenance as if the words had been 

 seared in with a red-hot iron. In fact, every man in that kitchen 

 was of the same stamp, and belonged to a set of ruffians who 

 would stick at nothing where plunder was concerned j a set of 



miscreants — 



" Who did not care a 



For the law or the new police. 

 And would scruple but little in killing the lamb 

 If they fancied they wanted the fleece." 



And as I looked at the blackened rafters and the dingy old settle by 

 the fireside, I thought if they couJd only speak, what nice tales of 

 desperate deeds, and deeds of villany which had been planned in 

 that old kitchen, they could tell us of. 



The old blacksmith showed me into the parlour — a dull, dark, 

 dirty little room, the walls of which were decorated with rudely- 

 drawn, highly-coloured scriptural pictures, among the most ex- 

 traordinary of which was old Noah coming out of the ark in top 

 loots. It is very strange — and I never could make out why — but 

 I have invariably remarked that you always see scriptural pieces 

 suspended from the walls of rooms where you would least 

 expect to find them. Fancy that old blacksmith leaving his 

 kitchen company, whose conversation was made up of the most 

 blasphemous oaths and dark allusions to the most desperate 



