Perhaps it is the engaging and attractive character of the landlord himself.  He is a tall, lanky man, usually seen in slippers, and trousers too short for his limbs; he ‘sloppets’ about in his waistcoat and shirt-sleeves, hands in pockets, and shoulders forward almost in a hump.  He hangs about the place, now bringing in a log, now carrying a bucket, now spinning a mop, now slouching down the garden to feed the numerous fowls that scratch around the stumps of cabbages.  Anything, in short, but work.  Sometimes, however, he takes the trap and horse, and is supposed to be gone on a dealing expedition.  Sometimes it is only to carry a jar of beer up to the men in the field, and to mouch a good armful of fresh-cut clover for provender from the swathe.  He sips gin the live-long day—­weak gin always—­every hour from morn till a cruel Legislature compels the closing of the shutters.  He is never intoxicated—­it is simply a habit, a sort of fuel to feed the low cunning in which his soul delights.  So far from intoxication is he, that there is a fable of some hard knocks and ill usage, and even of a thick head being beaten against the harder stones of the courtyard behind, when the said thick head was helpless from much ale.  Such matters are hushed up in the dark places of the earth.  So far from intoxication is he, that he has the keenest eye to business.

There is a lone rick-yard up in the fields yonder to which the carters come from the farm far away to fetch hay, and straw, and so forth.  They halt at the public, and are noticed to enjoy good living there, nor are they asked for their score.  A few trusses of hay, or bundles of straw, a bushel of corn, or some such trifle is left behind merely out of good-fellowship.  Waggons come up laden with tons of coal for the farms miles above, far from a railway station; three or four teams, perhaps, one after the other.  Just a knob or two can scarcely be missed, and a little of the small in a sack-bag.  The bundles of wood thrown down at the door by the labourers as they enter are rarely picked up again; they disappear, and the hearth at home is cold.  The foxes are blamed for the geese and the chickens, and the hunt execrated for not killing enough cubs, but Reynard is not always guilty.  Eggs and poultry vanish.  The shepherds have ample opportunities for disposing of a few spare lambs to a general dealer whose trap is handy.  Certainly, continuous gin does not chill the faculties.

If a can of ale is left in the outhouse at the back and happens to be found by a few choice spirits at the hour when the vicar is just commencing his sermon in church on Sunday, it is by the purest accident.  The turnip and swede greens left at the door, picked wholesale from the farmers’ fields; the potatoes produced from coat pockets by fingers which have been sorting heaps at the farmstead; the apples which would have been crushed under foot if the labourers had not considerately picked them up—­all these