d on spreading things out for us: ten yards off their
children squatted staring: the man smoked and chaffed us.

At last Saddlebank came running over the hill-side, making as if he meant
to bowl down what looked a black body of a baby against the sky, and
shouting, 'See, you fellows, here's a find!' He ran through us, swinging
his goose up to the hampers, saying that he had found the goose under a
furze-bush. While the words were coming out of his mouth, he saw the
tramps, and the male tramp's eyes and his met.

The man had one eyebrow and his lips at one corner screwed in a queer
lift: he winked slowly. 'Odd! ain't it?' he said.

Saddlebank shouldered round on us, and cried, 'Confound you fellows!
here's a beastly place you've pitched upon.' His face was the colour of
scarlet in patches.

'Now, I call it a beautiful place,' said the man, 'and if you finds
gooses hereabouts growing ready for the fire, all but plucking, why, it's
a bountiful place, I call it.'

The women tried to keep him silent. But for them we should have moved our
encampment. 'Why, of course, young gentlemen, if you want to eat the
goose, we'll pluck it for you and cook it for you, all nice,' they said.
'How can young gentlemen do that for theirselves?'

It was clear to us we must have a fire for the goose. Certain
observations current among us about the necessity to remove the goose's
inside, and not to lose the giblets, which even the boy who named them
confessed his inability to recognize, inclined the majority to accept the
woman's proposal. Saddlebank said it was on our heads, then.

To revive his good humour, Temple uncorked a bottle of champagne. The
tramp-woman lent us a tin mug, and round it went. One boy said, 'That's a
commencement'; another said, 'Hang old Rippenger.' Temple snapped his
fingers, and Bystop, a farmer's son, said, 'Well, now I've drunk
champagne; I meant to before I died!' Most of the boys seemed puzzled by
it. As for me, my heart sprang up in me like a colt turned out of stables
to graze. I determined that the humblest of my retainers should feed from
my table, and drink to my father's and Heriot's honour, and I poured out
champagne for the women, who just sipped, and the man, who vowed he
preferred beer. A spoonful of the mashed tarts I sent to each of the
children. Only one, the eldest, a girl about a year older than me, or
younger, with black eyebrows and rough black hair, refused to eat or
drink.

'Let her bide