e morning. These
are then put in 'punnets' by the greengrocers and retailed at a high
price. Later the blackberries ripen and form his third great crop; the
quantity he brings in to the town is astonishing, and still there is
always a customer. The blackberry harvest lasts for several weeks, as
the berries do not all ripen at once, but successively, and is
supplemented by elderberries and sloes. The moucher sometimes sleeps on
the heaps of disused tan in a tanyard; tanyards are generally on the
banks of small rivers. The tan is said to possess the property of
preserving those who sleep on it from chills and cold, though they may
lie quite exposed to the weather.

There is generally at least one such a man as this about the outskirts
of market towns, and he is an 'original' best defined by negatives. He
is not a tramp, for he never enters the casual wards and never
begs--that is, of strangers; though there are certain farmhouses where
he calls once now and then and gets a slice of bread and cheese and a
pint of ale. He brings to the farmhouse a duck's egg that has been
dropped in the brook by some negligent bird, or carries intelligence of
the nest made by some roaming goose in a distant withy-bed. Or once,
perhaps, he found a sheep on its back in a narrow furrow, unable to get
up and likely to die if not assisted, and by helping the animal to gain
its legs earned a title to the owner's gratitude.

He is not a thief; apples and plums and so on are quite safe, though the
turnip-tops are not: there is a subtle casuistry involved here--the
distinction between the quasi-wild and the garden product. He is not a
poacher in the sense of entering coverts, or even snaring a rabbit. If
the pheasants are so numerous and so tame that passing carters have to
whip them out of the way of the horses, it is hardly wonderful if one
should disappear now and then. Nor is he like the Running Jack that used
to accompany the more famous packs of fox-hounds, opening gates, holding
horses, and a hundred other little services, and who kept up with the
hunt by sheer fleetness of foot.

Yet he is fleet of foot in his way, though never seen to run; he _pads_
along on naked feet like an animal, never straightening the leg, but
always keeping the knee a little bent. With a basket of watercress slung
at his back by a piece of tar-cord, he travels rapidly in this way; his
feet go 'pad, pad' on the thick white dust, and he easily overtakes a
good walk