178 The Amateur Poacher 



were used for putting the dairy buckets on, after being 

 cleaned, to dry. No attempt was made to separate 

 the business from the inner life of the house. Here 

 in front these oaken buckets, scoured till nearly white, 

 their iron handles polished like silver, were close 

 under the eyes of any one looking out. By the front 

 door a besom leaned against the wall that every 

 comer might clean the mud from his boots ; and you 

 stepped at once from the threshold into the sitting- 

 room. A lane led past the garden, if that could be 

 called a lane which widened into a field and after rain 

 was flooded so deeply as to be impassable to foot 

 passengers. 



The morning we had chosen was fine ; and, after 

 shaking hands with old Farmer 'Willum,' whose 

 shooting days were over, we entered the lane, and by 

 it the fields. The meadows were small, enclosed with 

 double-mounds, and thickly timbered, so that as the 

 ground was level you could not see beyond the field 

 in which you stood, and upon looking over the gate 

 might surprise a flock of pigeons, a covey of par- 

 tridges, or a rabbit out feeding. Though the tinted 

 leaves were fast falling, the hedges where still full of 

 plants and vegetation that prevented seeing through 

 them. The ' kuck-kuck ' of the redwings came from 

 the bushes — the first note of approaching winter — and 



