like companionship and
sympathy even in this wild boy of the Moors, one in which his knowledge
of the haunts and habits of wild animals, his strength, activity, and
actual insensibility to hardship or fatigue, rendered his services of
more than ordinary value. There was not so good a hare-finder throughout
that division of the county; and it was curious to observe how
completely his skill in sportmanship overcame the contempt with which
grooms and gamekeepers, to say nothing of their less fine and more
tolerant masters, were wont to regard poor Jesse's ragged garments, the
sunburnt hair and skin, the want of words to express even his simple
meaning, and most of all, the strange obliquity of taste which led
him to prefer Kennett water to Kennett ale. Sportsmanship, sheer
sportsmanship, carried him through all!

Jesse was, as I have said, the most popular hare-finder of the
country-side, and during the coursing season was brought by that good
gift into considerable communication with his fellow creatures: amongst
the rest with his involuntary landlord, John Cobham.

John Cobham was a fair specimen of an English yeoman of the old
school--honest, generous, brave, and kind; but in an equal degree,
ignorant, obstinate and prejudiced. His first impression respecting
Jesse had been one of strong dislike, fostered and cherished by the old
labourer Daniel Thorpe, who, accustomed for twenty years to reign sole
sovereign of that unpeopled territory, was as much startled at the sight
of Jesse's wild, ragged figure, and sunburnt face, as Robinson Crusoe
when he first spied the track of a human foot upon _his_ desert island.
It was natural that old Daniel should feel his monarchy, or, more
correctly speaking, his vice-royalty, invaded and endangered; and
at least equally natural that he should communicate his alarm to his
master, who sallied forth one November morning to the Moors, fully
prepared to drive the intruder from his grounds, and resolved, if
necessary, to lodge him in the County Bridewell before night.

But the good farmer, who chanced to be a keen sportsman, and to be
followed that day by a favourite greyhound, was so dulcified by the
manner in which the delinquent started a hare at the very moment of
Venus's passing, and still more by the culprit's keen enjoyment of
a capital single-handed course, (in which Venus had even excelled
herself,) that he could not find in his heart to take any harsh measures
against him, for