n I'll set plenty o' stuff to yer hand
an' see about the fire.'

Chippy soon had a fire going, and a heap of dry sticks gathered to feed
it. A short distance away a big patch of gorse had been swaled in the
spring. It had been a very partial affair, and the strong stems stood
blackened and gaunt, but unburned. Thither went Chippy with the little
axe, and worked like a nigger, hacking down stem after stem, and
dragging them across until he had a pile of them also.

'They'll mek' a good steady fire for the night,' he remarked. Then he
seized the billy.

'What d'ye say to a drop o' milk?' he said. 'We could manage that, I
shouldn't wonder. When I wor' up in the wood I seen a man milkin' some
cows t'other side o' the coppice, an' now as I wor' luggin' these
sticks back I seen him a-comin' down the bank. Theer he goes.'

Chippy pointed, and Dick saw a man crossing the common with two shining
milk-pails hanging from a yoke. At this warm season of the year the
cows were out day and night, and the man had clearly come to milk them
on the spot, and thus make a single journey instead of the double one
involved in fetching them home and driving them back to the
feeding-ground.

Dick turned out twopence, and Chippy pursued the retreating milkman.
He returned, carrying the billy carefully.

'He wor' a good sort,' cried Chippy. 'He gied me brimmin' good measure
for the money.'

The scouts now made a cheerful supper. Chippy broiled the trout in the
ashes; Mrs. Hardy's sandwiches were very good, and the milk was heated
in the billy and drunk hot from their tin cups.

Supper was nearly over when a small, reddish-coated creature came
slipping through the grass towards them.

'There's a weasel,' said Dick, and the scouts watched it.

The little creature came quite near the fire, loping along, its nose
down as if following a track. Then it paused, raised its head on the
long snake-like neck, and looked boldly at the two boys, its small
bright eyes glittering with a fierce light.

'Pretty cheeky,' said Dick, and threw a scrap of wood at it. The
weasel gave a cry, more of anger than alarm, and glided away.

Within twenty minutes they saw a second weasel running along under the
brake, nosing in every hole, and pausing now and again to raise its
head and look round sharply on every hand.

'Weasels seem pretty busy about this 'ere coppice,' observed Chippy.

'No mistake about it,' agreed Dick. 'Do you know, Chippy,