‘What are you doing here, son?’ Block asked.

‘Scaring rooks for Farmer Topp,’ was the answer.

‘Have you got a charge of powder to spare?’ said Elzevir, showing his pistol.  ’I want to get a rabbit in the gorse for supper, and have dropped my flask.  Maybe you’ve seen a flask in walking through the furrows?’

He whispered to me to lie still, so that it might not be perceived my leg was broken; and the boy replied: 

’No, I have seen no flask; but very like have not come the same way as you, being sent out here from Lowermoigne; and as for powder, I have little left, and must save that for the rooks, or shall get a beating for my pains.’

‘Come,’ said Elzevir, ’give me a charge or two, and there is half a crown for thee.’  And he took the coin out of his pocket and showed it.

The boy’s eyes twinkled, and so would mine at so valuable a piece, and he took out from his pocket a battered cowskin flask.  ’Give flask and all,’ said Elzevir, ‘and thou shalt have a crown,’ and he showed him the larger coin.

No time was wasted in words; Elzevir had the flask in his pocket, and the boy was biting the crown.

‘What shot have you?’ said Elzevir.

‘What! have you dropped your shot-flask too?’ asked the boy.  And his voice had something of surprise in it.

’Nay, but my shot are over small; if thou hast a slug or two, I would take them.’  ‘I have a dozen goose-slugs, No. 2,’ said the boy; ’but thou must pay a shilling for them.  My master says I never am to use them, except I see a swan or buzzard, or something fit to cook, come over:  I shall get a sound beating for my pains, and to be beat is worth a shilling.’

‘If thou art beat, be beat for something more,’ says Elzevir the tempter.  ‘Give me that firelock that thou carriest, and take a guinea.’

‘Nay, I know not,’ says the boy; ’there are queer tales afloat at Lowermoigne, how that a Posse met the Contraband this morning, and shots were fired, and a gauger got an overdose of lead—­maybe of goose slugs No. 2.  The smugglers got off clear, but they say the hue and cry is up already, and that a head-price will be fixed of twenty pound.  So if I sell you a fowling-piece, maybe I shall do wrong, and have the Government upon me as well as my master.’  The surprise in his voice was changed to suspicion, for while he spoke I saw that his eye had fallen on my foot, though I tried to keep it in the shadow; and that he saw the boot clotted with blood, and the kerchief tied round my leg.

‘’Tis for that very reason,’ says Elzevir, ’that I want the firelock.  These smugglers are roaming loose, and a pistol is a poor thing to stop such wicked rascals on a lone hill-side.  Come, come, thou dost not want a piece to guard thee; they will not hurt a boy.’

He had the guinea between his finger and thumb, and the gleam of the gold was too strong to be withstood.  So we gained a sorry matchlock, slugs, and powder, and the boy walked off over the furrow, whistling with his hand in his pocket, and a guinea and a crown-piece in his hand.