end Yorkshire Dick said this, with that curious gypsy
intonation that turns English into a foreign tongue if you forget the
words and listen only to the voice. He was squatting in the
sunshine, with his back against an oak sapling, a black cutty under
his nose, and Meg, my small fox-terrier, between his thighs.
In those days, being just fifteen, I had taken a sketch-book and put
myself to school under Dick to learn the lore of Things As They Are:
and, as part of the course, we had been the death of a badger that
morning--Sunday morning.

It was one of those days in autumn when the dews linger in the shade
till noon and the blackberry grows too watery for the _connoisseur_.
On the ridge where we loafed, the short turf was dry enough, and the
sun strong between the sparse saplings; but the paths that zigzagged
down the thick coppice to right and left were soft to the foot, and
streaked with the slimy tracks of snails. A fine blue mist filled
the gulf on either hand, and beneath it mingled the voices of streams
and of birds busy beside them. At the mouth of each valley a thicker
column of blue smoke curled up like a feather--that to the left
rising from the kitchen chimney of my father's cottage, that to the
right from the encampment where Dick's _bouillon_ was simmering above
a wood fire.

Looking over Dick's shoulder along the ridge I could see, at a point
where the two valleys climbed to the upland, a white-washed building,
set alone, and backed by an undulating moorland dotted with
clay-works. This was Ebenezer Chapel; and my father was its deacon.
Its one bell had sounded down the ridge and tinkled in my ear from
half-past ten to eleven that morning. Its pastor would walk back and
eat roast duck and drink three-star brandy under my father's roof
after service. Bell and pastor had spoken in vain, as far as I was
concerned; but I knew that all they had to say would be rubbed in
with my father's stirrup-leather before nightfall.

"'Tis pretty sport," said Dick, "but it leaves traces."

Between us the thin red soil of the ridge was heaped in mounds, and
its stain streaked our clothes and faces. On one of these mounds lay
a spade and two picks, a pair of tongs, an old sack, dyed in its
original service of holding sheep's reddle, and, on the sack, the
carcase of our badger, its grey hairs messed with blood about the
snout. This carcase was a matter of study not only to me, who had my
sketch-book out, but to a c