The Project Gutenberg EBook of Four Pigeons, by W.W. Jacobs

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Title: Four Pigeons
Captains All, Book 7.

Author: W.W. Jacobs

Release Date: February 20, 2004 [EBook #11187]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUR PIGEONS ***

Produced by David Widger

CAPTAINS ALL

By W.W. Jacobs

THE FOUR PIGEONS

[Illustration: "The Four Pigeons."]

The old man took up his mug and shifted along the bench until he was in
the shade of the elms that stood before the _Cauliflower_. The action also
had the advantage of bringing him opposite the two strangers who were
refreshing themselves after the toils of a long walk in the sun.

"My hearing ain't wot it used to be," he said, tremulously. "When you
asked me to have a mug o' ale I 'ardly heard you; and if you was to ask
me to 'ave another, I mightn't hear you at all."

One of the men nodded.

"Not over there," piped the old man. "That's why I come over here," he
added, after a pause. "It 'ud be rude like to take no notice; if you was
to ask me."

He looked round as the landlord approached, and pushed his mug gently in
his direction. The landlord, obeying a nod from the second stranger,
filled it.

"It puts life into me," said the old man, raising it to his lips and
bowing. "It makes me talk."

"Time we were moving, Jack," said the first traveller. The second,
assenting to this as an abstract proposition, expressed, however, a
determination to finish his pipe first.

I heard you saying something about shooting, continued the old man, and
that reminds me of some shooting we 'ad here once in Claybury. We've
always 'ad a lot o' game in these parts, and if it wasn't for a low,
poaching fellow named Bob Pretty--Claybury's disgrace I call 'im--we'd
'ave a lot more.

It happened in this way. Squire Rockett was going abroad to foreign
parts for a year, and he let the Hall to a gentleman from London named
Sutton. A real gentleman 'e was, open-'anded and free, and just about
October he 'ad a lot of 'is friends come down from London to 'elp 'im
kill the pheasants.

The first day they frightened more than they killed, but they enjoy