264 WITHIN AN HOUR OF LONDON TOWN. 



knew all the fowl and their habits most thoroughly 

 well. As a boy I became proficient in two things. 

 I could read fluently, and patiently study the birds 

 from morning to night. Also I tried to draw them. 

 This last accomplishment, I can assure my readers, 

 was at times a source of disheartening trouble to 

 me, both as regarded my comfort with the home- 

 folks, and my disappointment when I could not 

 do it to my own satisfaction. They were loyal to 

 the very backbone, those dwellers in the marsh- 

 lands and along the shores. " For God and the 

 King" and "for Queen and Country" have been 

 promptly responded to when the call has been made, 

 by my own people especially. Men and women, 

 married and single, all were quickly up in arms for 

 their country and their sovereign, a hot-blooded, 

 hard-handed people, but their hearts in the right 

 place. How often memory recalls that wiry, long- 

 legged, kind -hearted friend, that prince of bog- 

 clearers, dead long ago, Baulk, who was a man in 

 the full sense of the word ! With his musket slung 

 at his back, like that of old Hulldown, " one thet 

 had bin fet with, in the wars with the Frenchers," 

 and his long ash leaping-pole, he was the admira- 



