“‘Nothin’ to what there is here,’ says another.
“‘Why,’ says my chap, ‘we’ve one chap as is the best hand at a bit o’ night work as ever I did see. You should see him set a sneer or ingle, he’d captivate any mortial thing. Say he wants a few rabbuds, he’d a’most whistle ’em outer their holes. Fezzans ’ll run their heads into his ingles like winkin’. While, as fur ’ares, he never sets wires for them.’
“‘Why not,’ says one on ’em.
“‘Oh,’ says my chap, ‘he goes and picks ’em up outer the fields, just as he likes.’
“‘Ha, ha, ha!’ laughs lots on ’em there; all but Ruddle, and he didn’t.
“‘What d’yer think o’ that, ole man,’ says one.
“‘Nothin’ at all,’ says Ruddle. ‘Do it mysen,’ for you see he was a bit on, and ready to talk, while mostlings he was as close as a hegg.
“‘Bet you a gallon on it,’ says my chap.
“‘Done,’ says Ruddle, and they settles as my chap and Buddie should have a walk nex’ day, Sunday, and settle it.
“Nex’ day then these two goes out together, and just ketching sight on ’em, I knowed something was up, but in course I didn’t know my chap, and my chap didn’t know me, and I sits at home smoking a pipe, for I says to myself, I says: Browsem, I says, there’s suthin’ up, an’ if you can only put salt on that ’ere Ruddle’s tail, you’ll soon clear the village. You see, I on’y wanted to bring one home to him, and that would have done, for he’d on’y got off two or three times before by the skin of his teeth, and while three or four of his tools was kicking their heels in gaol, my gentleman was feathering his nest all right.