Page:Yeast. A Problem - Kingsley (1851).djvu/62

 What matter who put the snare down, or the hare in, perwided he takes it up, man? If 'twas his'n, he'd be all the better pleased. The most notoriousest poacher as walks unhung!' And old Harry lifted up his crooked hands in pious indignation.

'I'll have no more gamekeeping, Harry. What with hunting down Christians as if they were vermin, all night, and being cursed by the squire all day, I'd sooner be a sheriff's runner, or a negro slave.'

'Ay, ay! that's the way the young dogs always bark afore they're broke in, and gets to like it, as the eels does skinning. Haven't I bounced pretty near out of my skin many a time afore now, on this here very bridge, with 'Harry, jump in, you stupid hound!' and 'Harry, get out, you one-eyed tailor!' And then, if one of the gentlemen lost a fish with their clumsiness—Oh, Father! to hear 'em let out at me and my landing net, and curse fit to fright the devil! Dash their sarcy tongues! Eh? Don't old Harry know their ways? Don't he know 'em, now?'

'Ay,' said the young man bitterly. 'We break the dogs, and we load the guns, and we find the game, and mark the game,—and then they call themselves sportsmen; we choose the flies, and we bait the spinning-hooks, and we show them where the fish lie, and then when they've hooked them, they can't get them out without us and the spoon-net; and then they go home to the ladies and boast of the lot of fish they killed—and who thinks of the keeper?'

'Oh? ah? Then don't say old Harry knows