34 The Gamekeeper at Home. 



tricts have reduced the most outlying of the provinces 

 to a nearly dead uniformity of shoddy. 



One pair of eyes cannot be everywhere at once ; 

 consequently the keeper, as his son grew up, found 

 him a great help in this way : while he goes one 

 road the lad goes the other, and the undermen never 

 feel certain that some one is not about. Perhaps 

 partly for this reason the lad is not a favourite in the 

 village, and few if any of the other boys make friends 

 with him. He is too loyal to permit of their playing 

 trespass — he looks down on them as a little lower in 

 the scale. Do they ever speak, even in the humblest 

 way, to the proprietor of the place ? In their turn 

 they ostracise him after their fashion ; so he becomes 

 a silent, solitary youth, self-reliant, and old for his 

 years. 



He is a daring climber : as after the hawk's nest, 

 generally made in the highest elms or pines — if that 

 species of tree is to be found — taking the young 

 birds to some farmhouse where the children delight 

 in living creatures. Some who are not children, or 

 are children of ' a larger growth/ like to have a tame 

 hawk in the garden, clipping the wings so that it 

 shall not get away. Hawks have most amusing 

 tricks, and in time become comparatively tame, at 

 least to the person who feeds them. The beauty of 



