"An do, please your honour, find me a job," cried Thomas Putt. "I wouldn't be so bold an' 'dashus as to ax for a shilling a day; but, afore God, I'll do great deeds for ninepence!"
"An' what great deeds can you do?" asked Malherb. "You should go to a physician for your eyes."
"They be only pink-rimmed, your worship," explained the owner. "They'm diamonds for seeing with—'specially by night."
"Putt be a very good man if he's got a better to watch him, ban't you, Thomas?" asked Mr. Beer, and the poacher admitted it.
"'Tis so," he confessed frankly. "I can't stand to work if I know there ban't no eye upon me. 'Tis my nature."
"Not but what you've got your vartues," added Beer kindly. "An' come his honour wants a salmon, or a woodcock, or a fat hare, he can't do better than go to you for it."
Mr. Malherb enjoyed this subject.
"I'm a sportsman myself, my lads. I love every bit of sporting—gun, horse, hound, and rod. You shall have your chance, Tom; but no poaching, mind, or it's all up with you. Now I shall want but two more men and one more woman and my household will be complete."
As he spoke a figure crawled out from a corner. No word had he spoken either before or since Malherb's arrival, but now this singular man approached, pulled his hair, and addressed the new power. He looked almost a dwarf, but his head was of normal size, and his expression betokened character. The labourer had seen sixty years. He was quite bald and as wrinkled as an old russet apple. His costume differed much from that of the company, for it seemed that he was chiefly clad in the pelts of vermin. A martin's skin furnished his cap, and at its side glimmered the sky-blue wing-feathers of a jay; his coat was green corduroy, but his waistcoat was made of moleskins, and he had a white one on each side for the pocket-lappet.
"I be Leaman Cloberry, coney-catcher an' mole-catcher," he said. "No man can teel a trap like me."