h it. Now and then a shot sounded far away, but clear and sharp, from
where the guests of my lord of Barfield were killing time in the warren.

A labouring man, smock-frocked, billy-cocked, gaitered, and hob-nailed,
was clamping down the frozen lane, the earth ringing like iron under
iron as he walked. By his side was a fair-haired lad of nine or ten
years of age, a boy of frank and engaging countenance, carefully and
even daintily dressed, and holding up his head as if he were a lord of
the soil and knew it. The boy and the labourer were talking, and on the
frosty silence of the fields the clear treble of the boy's speech rang
out clearly and carried far. A burly man, with a surly red face, who had
stooped to button a gaiter, in a meadow just beyond the brook, and
had laid down his gun beside him the while, heard both voice and words
whilst the speaker was a hundred yards away.

'But don't you think it's very wicked, Ichabod?'

The labourer's voice only reached the listener in the meadow. He spoke
with the Barfield drawl, and his features, which were stiffened by the
frozen wind, were twisted into a look of habitual waggery.

'Well,' said he, in answer to his young companion, 'maybe, Master
Richard, it might be wicked, but it's main like natur.'

'I shan't hate Joe Mountain when I'm a man,' said the boy.

The surly man in the field, hearing these words, looked on a sudden
surlier still, and throwing up his head with a listening air, and
holding his ankle with both hands, crouched and craned his neck to
listen.

'May'st have to change thy mind, Master Richard,' said the labourer.

'Why should I change my mind, Ichabod?' asked the boy, looking up at
him.

'Why?' answered Ichabod, 'thee'lt niver have it said as thee wast afraid
of any o' the Mountain lot.'

'I'm not afraid of him,' piped the engaging young cockerel 'We had a
fight in the coppice last holidays, and I beat him. The squire caught
us, and we were going to stop, but he made us go on, and he saw fair.
Then he made us shake hands after. Joe Mountain wouldn't say he'd had
enough, but the squire threw up the sponge for him. And he gave us two
half-crowns apiece, and said we were both good plucked uns.'

'Ah! 'said Ichabod, with warmth, 'he's the right sort is the squire.
And there's no sort or kind o' sport as comes amiss to him. A gentleman
after my own heart.'

'He made us shake hands and promise we'd be friends,' said Master
Richard, 'and we're go