He seemed to have nothing to do but tell tales and
sing, except at the rare intervals when some of the family returned
unexpectedly. The keeper was always up there in the kitchen; he was as
pleasant and jovial as a man could well be, though full of oaths on
occasion. He was a man of one tale--of a somewhat enigmatical character.
He would ask a stranger if they had ever heard of such-and-such a
village where water set fire to a barn, ducks were drowned, and pigs cut
their own throats, all in a single day.
It seemed that some lime had been stored in the barn, when the brook
rose and flooded the place; this slaked the lime and fired the straw,
and so the barn. Something of the same kind happens occasionally on the
river barges. The ducks were in a coop fastened down, so that they could
not swim on the surface of the flood, which passed over and drowned
them. The pigs were floated out of the sty, and in swimming their
sharp-edged hoofs struck their fat jowls just behind the ear at every
stroke till they cut into the artery, and so bled to death. Where he got
this history from I do not know.
One bright October morning (towards the end of the month) Dickon drove
me over to the old place with his fast trotter--our double-barrels
hidden under some sacks in the trap. The keeper was already waiting in
the kitchen, sipping a glass of hot purl; the butler was filling every
pocket with cartridges.
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