’Of course they tried to drive I out of un, and wanted the cottage; but granny had all the receipts for the quit-rent, and my lard and all the lawyers couldn’t shove us out, and there we means to bide.  You have seed that row of oaks as grows in the hedge behind our house.  One of ’em leaned over the roof, and one of the limbs was like to fall; but they wouldn’t cut him, just to spite us, and the rain dripping spoilt the thatch.  So I just had another chimney built at that end for an oven, and kept up the smoke till all the tree that side died.  I’ve had more than one pheasant through them oaks, as draws ’em:  I had one in a gin as I put in the ditch by my garden.

’They started a tale as ’twas I as stole the lambs a year or two ago, and they had me up for it; but they couldn’t prove nothing agen me.  Then they had me for unhinging the gates and drowning ’em in the water, but when they was going to try the case they two young farmers as you know of come and said as they did it when they was tight, and so I got off.  They said as ’twas I that put the poison for the hounds when three on ’em took it and died while the hunt was on.  It were the dalledest lie!  I wouldn’t hurt a dog not for nothing.  The keeper hisself put that poison, I knows, ’cause he couldn’t bear the pack coming to upset the pheasants.  Yes, they been down upon I a main bit, but I means to bide.  All the farmers knows as I never touched no lamb, nor even pulled a turmot, and they never couldn’t get no witnesses.

’After a bit I catched the keeper hisself and the policeman at it; and there be another as knows it, and who do you think that be?  It be the man in town as got the licence to sell game as haves most of my hares; the keeper selled he a lot as the money never got to my lard’s pocket and the steward never knowed of.  Look at that now!  So now he shuts his eye and axes me to drink, and give me the ferreting job in Longlands Mound; but, Lord bless ’ee, I bean’t so soft as he thinks for.

’They used to try and get me to fight the keeper when they did catch me with a wire, but I knowed as hitting is transporting, and just put my hands in my pockets and let ’em do as they liked. They knows I bean’t afraid of ’em in the road; I’ve threshed more than one of ’em, but I ain’t going to jump into that trap.  I’ve been before the bench, at one place and t’other, heaps of times, and paid the fine for trespass.  Last time the chairman said to I, “So you be here again, Oby; we hear a good deal about you.”  I says, “Yes, my lard, I be here agen, but people never don’t hear nothing about you.”  That shut the old duffer up.  Nobody never heard nothing of he, except at rent-audit.

’However, they all knows me now—­my lard and the steward, and the keeper and the bailies, and the farmers; and they don’t take half the notice of I as they used to.  The keeper he don’t dare, nor the policeman as I telled you, and the rest be got used to me and my ways.  And I does very well one week with t’other.  One week I don’t take nothing, and the next I haves a good haul, chiefly hares and rabbits; ’cause of course I never goes into the wood, nor the plantations.  It wants eight or ten with crape masks on for that job.