sharp man, felt inclined to doubt he hadn't seen a baggering poacher's
mongrel; but old John wouldn't tell 'em then. He was a stickler for his
job and never wasted no time gossiping in working hours.

"'Tis too long to unfold now," he said, "because Bill and me have got to
be about our duty; but if you'll drop in o' Sunday and drink a dish of
tea, Wade, you can hear the truth of the Hound; and you can look in on
your way to work, Bill, and hear likewise if you've a mind to it."

They promised to come and upon the appointed hour both turned up at the
gamekeeper's cottage on Thurlow Down, where the woods end and the right of
way gives to the high road. And there was John and his wife, Milly, and
their daughter, Millicent, for she was called after her mother and always
went by her full name to distinguish her. Meadows had married late in life
and Milly was forty when he took her, and they never had but one child. A
very lovely, shy, woodland sort of creature was Millicent Meadows, and
though a good few had courted her, William Parsloe among 'em, none had won
her, or tempted her far from her mother's apron-strings as yet. Dark and
brown-eyed and lively she was, with a power of dreaming, and she
neighboured kindlier among wild things than tame, and belonged to the
woods you might say. She was a nervous maiden, however, and owing to her
gift of make-believe, would people the forest with strange shadows bred of
her own thoughts and fancies. So she better liked the sunshine than the
moonlight and didn't travel abroad much after dark unless her father, or
some other male, was along with her.

Another joined the tea-party--a very ancient man, once a woodman, and a
crony of John's; and the keeper explained to the younger chaps why he'd
asked Silas Belchamber to come to tea and meet 'em.

"Mr. Belchamber's the oldest servant on the property and a storehouse of
fine tales, and when I told him the Hound had been seen, he was very
wishful to see the man as had done so," explained Mr. Meadows. "You may
say the smell of a saw-pit clings to Silas yet, for he moved and breathed
in the dust of pine and larch for more'n half a century."

"And now I be waiting for the grey woodman to throw me myself," said Mr.
Belchamber. "But I raised up as well as threw down, didn't I, John?"

"Thousands o' dozens of saplings with those hands you planted, and saw
lift up to be trees," answered Meadows, "and scores of dozens of timber
you've felled; and