imes 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 and scores of other matters scarce worth naming find their
way over that threshold. Perhaps the man is genial