Little John now gave up all hope, and only pleaded piteously for his ferrets.  ’Mind as you doan’t hit ’em, measter; doant’ee shoot into a hole, you.’  For half an hour we had some really good shooting:  then it began to slacken, and we told him to catch his ferrets and go on to the next bury.  I am not sure that he would not have rebelled outright but just then a boy came up carrying a basket of provisions, and a large earthenware jar with a bung cork, full of humming ale.  Farmer Willum had sent this, and the strong liquor quite restored Little John’s good humour.  It really was ale—­such as is not to be got for money.

The boy said that he had seen Farmer Willum’s hereditary enemy, the keeper, watching us from his side of the boundary, doubtless attracted by the sound of the firing.  He said also that there was a pheasant in a little copse beside the brook.  We sent him out again to reconnoitre:  he returned and repeated that the keeper had gone, and that he thought he saw him enter the distant fir plantations.  So we left the boy to help Little John at the next bury—­a commission that made him grin with delight, and suited the other very well, since the noisy guns were going away, and he could use his nets.

We took the lined ferret with us, and started after the pheasant.  Just as we approached the copse, the spaniel gave tongue on the other side of the hedge.  Orion had tied him up to a bush, wishing to leave him with Little John.  But the spaniel tore and twisted till he got loose and had followed us—­keeping out of sight—­till now crossing the scent of a rabbit he set up his bark.  We called him to heel, and I am afraid he got a kick.  But the pheasant was alarmed, and rose before we could properly enfilade the little copse, where we should most certainly have had him.  He flew high and straight for the fir plantations, where it was useless to follow.

However, we leaped the brook and entered the keeper’s territory under shelter of a thick double-mound.  We slipped the lined ferret into a small bury, and succeeded in knocking over a couple of rabbits.  The object of using the lined ferret was because we could easily recover it.  This was pure mischief, for there were scores of rabbits on our own side.  But then there was just a little spice of risk in this, and we knew Willum would gloat over it.

After firing these two shots we got back again as speedily as possible, and once more assisted Little John.  We could not, however, quite resist the pleasure of shooting a rabbit occasionally and so tormenting him.  We left one hole each side without a net, and insisted on the removal of the net that stretched across the top of the bank.  This gave us a shot now and then, and the removal of the cross net allowed the rabbit some little law.

Notwithstanding these drawbacks—­to him—­Little John succeeded in making a good bag.  He stayed till it was quite dark to dig out a ferret that had killed a rabbit in the hole.  He took his money for his day’s work with indifference:  but when we presented him with two couple of clean rabbits his gratitude was too much for him to express.  The gnawn and ‘blown’ rabbits [by shot] were his perquisite, the clean rabbits an unexpected gift.  It was not their monetary value; it was the fact that they were rabbits.