“Ha, ha! look at old Grip!” cried Tom Tallington, kicking his heels together as the big dog gave his ears a shake, and lay down with his head between his paws, blinking at the fire, while his little assailant uttered a snarl, which seemed to mean “Oh you coward!” and trotted away to meet a tall rugged-looking man, who came slouching up, with long strides, his head bent, his shoulders up, a long heavy gun over his shoulder, and a bundle of wild-fowl in his left hand, the birds banging against his leather legging as he walked, and covering it with feathers.
He was a curious, furtive-looking man, with quick, small eyes, a smooth brown face, and crisp, grizzly hair, surmounted by a roughly-made cap of fox-skin.
He came straight up to the fire on the windy side, nodded and scowled at the wheelwright as the latter gave him a friendly smile, and then turned slowly to the two boys, when his visage relaxed a little, and there was the dawning of a smile for each.
“What have you got, Dave?” cried Dick, laying hold of the bunch of birds, and turning them over, so as to examine their heads and feet; and, without waiting for an answer, he went on—“Three curlews, two pie-wipes, and a—and a—I say, Tom, what’s this?”
Tom Tallington looked eagerly at the straight-billed, long-legged, black-and-white bird, but shook his head, while Chip, the dog, who had seated himself with his nose close to the bunch, uttered one short sharp bark.
“I say, Dave, what’s this bird?” said Dick.
The man did not turn his head, but stood staring at the fire, and said, in a husky voice, what sounded like “Scatcher!”
“Oh!” said Dick; and there was a pause, during which the fire roared, and the smoke flew over the wheelwright’s long, low house at the edge of the fen. “I say,” cried Dick, “you don’t set oyster-catchers in the ’coy.”
“Yow don’t know what you’re talking about,” growled the man addressed.
“Why, of course he didn’t,” cried Tom Tallington, a stoutly-built lad of sixteen or seventeen, very much like his companion Dick, only a little fairer and plumper in the face. “They ain’t swimmers.”