"No; this is a field mouse. Look at his long tail and long ears. The rats have got shorter, thicker tails, and look thicker altogether."

"Now then, are you young gents a-coming down?" shouted Jem.

"Yes. All right. Directly. Oh, isn't that fellow a beauty!" he continued, throwing down the mouse he had lifted back into its place in the owls' larder. "I say, don't the old ones keep up a good supply!"

A second summons from the man made us prepare to descend, the full-grown owl making no effort to escape, but blinking at us, and making a soft, hissing noise. The goblin-looking younger one, however, gaped widely, and seemed to tumble over backwards from the weight of its head. It was so deplorable and old-looking a creature that it seemed impossible that it could ever grow into a soft, thickly feathered bird like the other, and I said so.

"Oh, but it will," said Mercer; "all birds that I know of, except ducks and chickens and geese, are horridly ugly till they are fledged. Young thrushes and rooks are nasty-looking, big-eyed, naked things at first.

There: you go on down."

I descended through the trap-door, and he followed, the man looking at us searchingly, as if he had not much faith in our honesty when face to face with such temptations as owls' eggs, but his look was only momentary, and he took it for granted that we had kept our word.

"Where are the old birds, Jem?" said my companion.

"Oh, right away somewhere in the woods, asleep. Want to see them?"

"Of course."

"Then you must come at night, and you'll see these young ones sitting at one of the holes giving a hiss now and then for the old birds to come and feed them, and every now and then one of them flies up."

"Yes, I know," said Mercer, "so still and softly that you can't hear the wings. But I should like that egg."

"Then you had better ask the master, and see what he says."

"Well, my lads," cried Hopley, in his bluff, deep voice, "seen the owls?"

"Yes; and now, I say, Bob Hopley, you'll let us go through the big beech-wood, and round by the hammer pond?"

"What for?" said the keeper.

"It's holiday to-day, and I want to show this chap, our new boy, round."

"What! to teach him mischief like you know?"

"Get out. I don't do any mischief. You might let us go."

"Not my wood, it's master's."

"Well, he wouldn't mind."

"And I've got young fezzans in coops all about the place."

"Well, we don't want the pheasants."

"I should think not, indeed; and just you look here: I see you've got that chap Magglin up at work in your garden again; you just tell him from me that if ever I see him in our woods, I'll give him a peppering with small shot."

"You carry your impudent messages yourself, or tell the Doctor," said Mercer sharply.

"What?" cried the keeper, scowling at us.

"I say, you take your impudent messages yourself. You know you daren't shoot at him."

"Oh, daren't I? I'll let him see."

"It's against the law, and your master's a magistrate. You know you daren't. What would he say?"

The keeper raised his gun with both hands, breathed on the mottled walnut-wood stock, and began to polish it with the sleeve of his velveteen jacket. Then he looked furtively at Jem Roff, then at me, and lastly at Mercer, before letting the gun fall in the hollow of his arm, and taking off his cap to give his head a scratch, while a grim smile began to play about his lips.

"You've got me there, youngster," he said slowly, and Jem began to chuckle.

"Of course I have," said Mercer confidently. "Besides, what's that got to do with me?"

"Why, he's a friend of yours."

"That I'm sure he's not. He's a nasty, mean beggar, who makes me pay ever so much for everything he does for me. You ask him," continued Mercer, giving his head a side wag at me, "if only this morning he didn't make me give him twopence for a pen'orth of worms."

"Yes, that he did," I said, coming to my companion's help.

"Humph!" grunted the keeper. "Well, youngsters, never you mind that, you pay him, and keep him at a distance. He's no good to n.o.body, and I wonder at Doctor Browne, as teaches young gents to be gents, should keep such a bad un about his place. He's a rank poacher, that's what he is, and there ain't nothing worse than a poacher, is there, Jem Roff?"

"Thief," said that gentleman.

"Thief? I don't know so much about that. Thieves don't go thieving with loaded guns to shoot keepers, do they?"

"Well, no," said Jem.

"Of course they don't, so that's what I say--there aren't nothing worse than a poacher, and don't you young gents have anything to do with him, or, as sure as you stand there, he'll get you into some sc.r.a.pe."

"Who's going to have anything to do with him?" cried Mercer pettishly.

"Why, you are, sir."

"I only buy a bird of him, sometimes, to stuff."

"Yes, birds he's shot on our grounds, I'll be bound, or else trapped ones."

"Well, they're no good, and you never shoot anything for me. P'r'aps he is a bad one, but if I pay him, he is civil. He wouldn't refuse to let two fellows go through the big woods."

"Thought you was going fishing."

"Not till this evening, after tea."

"Where are you going?"

"Down by the mill."

"Wouldn't like to try after a big carp, I s'pose, or one of our old perch?"