'But, you see I don't run no risk except from the keeper hisself, the
men as helps un, and two or three lickspittles as be always messing
round after a ferreting job or some wood-cutting, and the Christmas
charities. It be enough to make a man sick to see they. This yer parish
be a very big un, and a be preserved very high, and I can do three times
as much in he as in the next un, as ain't much preserved. So I sticks to
this un.
'Of course they tried to drive I out of un, and wanted the cottage; but
granny had all the receipts for the quit-rent, and my lard and all the
lawyers couldn't shove us out, and there we means to bide. You have seed
that row of oaks as grows in the hedge behind our house. One of 'em
leaned over the roof, and one of the limbs was like to fall; but they
wouldn't cut him, just to spite us, and the rain dripping spoilt the
thatch. So I just had another chimney built at that end for an oven, and
kept up the smoke till all the tree that side died. I've had more than
one pheasant through them oaks, as draws 'em: I had one in a gin as I
put in the ditch by my garden.
'They started a tale as 'twas I as stole the lambs a year or two ago,
and they had me up for it; but they couldn't prove nothing agen me. Then
they had me for unhinging the gates and drowning 'em in the water, but
when they was going to try the case they two young farmers as you know
of come and said as they did it when they was tight, and so I got off.
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