"Ah! that was the country fellow that turned up when we sounded the mort by Col-Dene. He seemed to spring up out of the ground. He is a snapper up of unconsidered trifles, I'll be bound. The fellow claimed the hide: he said the skin was the keeper's fee." [26]
[26] 3 Henry VI, III. i.
"That 'ould be he. I warrant he lent a hand in taking assay and breaking up the deer. Tis just what he enjoys."
"Ah! I marked him disembowelling the poor dead beast in right good will, with hands besmeared with blood." [27]
[27] Henry IV., V. iv.
Then they fell to talking of other things; and the honest old squire began to brag about his London days, and how he was once of Clement's Inn.
"There was I, and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Barnes, and Francis Pickbone, and Will Squele, a Cotswold man; you had not four such swinge-bucklers in all the Inns o' Court again." [28]
[28] Henry IV., III. ii.
But the old man was far too interested in his own doings to ask if his guest had ever been in London. It is the prerogative of age to take for granted that all younger men are of no account, and even as children, "to be seen and not heard."
"To-morrow," said the squire, "at break of day, we be a-going a-birding, to try some young falcons Bill Peregrine has lately trained. Wilt join us, Master Shakespeare?"