36 THE GAMEKEEPER AT HOME. 



with the hair on it. The hair is outside, and the roan- 

 and-white colour has a curious appearance : the material 

 is said to be very warm and durable. Such waistcoats 

 were common years ago ; but of late the looms and spin- 

 dles of the manufacturing districts have reduced the most 

 outlying of the provinces to a nearly dead uniformity of 

 shoddy. 



One pair of eyes cannot be everywhere at once ; con- 

 sequently 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 



