At that point Betty Middleweek appeared and whispered to Mary; and at the same time a little boy in quaint costume, with a head two sizes too large, shuffled up the garden path, and stood staring at the defunct goose with large vacant eyes. "He bain't your Old Sal after all," said Betty. "He belongs to Mary Shakerley, and her little Charlie ha' come for him. He saw the dog go after 'en, and he ran away mazed like to tell his mother, but her had gone to Tavistock market, and ha' just come home."
"He've only got one eye," piped little Charlie in evidence.
Mary examined the dead body. It was that of a one-eyed goose.
"Aw now," she said in a disappointed fashion, "I reckon he bain't my Old Sal after all."
"I am willing to pay some one. Who is it to be?" asked the artist, who wanted to get back to his food.
"Please to pay little Charlie, sir," said Betty Middleweek. "Charlie, come up to the gentleman."
"Well, my lad, how much do you want for your goose? Eightpence a pound, is it?"
"Dear life!" cried Mary. "He hain't worth eightpence a pound. Look at 'en! He'm a proper old goosie, wi'out a bit o' meat on his bones, and the feathers fair dropping out o' his skin wi' age. He'd ha' scared the dog off if he'd been a young bird, or got away from 'en. My Old Sal would ha' tored any dog to pieces. Don't ye pay eightpence a pound. He hain't worth it. He never laid no eggs, I reckon, and he warn't no good for a mother. He'd ha' died purty soon if that dog o' yours hadn't killed 'en."
"You seem to have altered your opinions rather suddenly," said the artist.
"Well, I bain't a one-eyed old gander," said Mary. "I knows what goosies ought to be to fetch eightpence a pound, and I can see he ain't got enough meat on him to feed a heckimal. Aw, my dear life, if I can't tell a goosie when I sees him who can?" And off went Mary, striking her big stick noisily on the ground, wiping her nose on the back of her hand, and muttering an epitaph upon the still missing Old Sal, who, she supposed, had been carried off by some evil beast and devoured in the secret places of the moor.