dropping a lowly curtsey when the dog rubs against her. The young
gentleman smiles at her alarm and calls the dog; the elder walks on
utterly indifferent. A little way up the road the party get over the gate
into the meadows on that side, and make for another outlying plantation.
Then, and not till then, does the old woman set out again, upon her slow
and laborious journey. 'Filbard be just like a gatepost,' she mutters; 'a'
don't take no notice of anybody.' Though she had dropped the squire so
lowly a curtsey, and in his presence would have behaved with profound
respect, behind his back and out of hearing she called him by his family
name without any prefix. The cottagers thereabout almost always did this
in speaking among themselves of their local magnate. They rarely said
'Mr.'; it was generally 'Filbard,' or, even more familiarly, 'Jim
Filbard.' Extremes meet. They hardly dared open their mouths when they saw
him, and yet spoke of him afterwards as if he sat with them at bacon and
cabbage time.

Squire Filbard and one of his sons were walking round the outlying copses
that October day with the object of driving the pheasants in towards the
great Filbard wood, rather than of making a bag. The birds were inclined
to wander about, and the squire thought a little judicious shooting round
the outskirts would do good, and at the same time give his son some sport
without disturbing the head of game he kept up in the wood itself. The
squire was large made, tall, and well proportioned, and with a bearded,
manly countenance. His neck was, perhaps, a little thick and
apoplectic-looking, but burnt to a healthy brick-dust colour by exposure
to the sun. The passing years had drawn some crows'-feet round the eyes,
but his step was firm, his back straight, and he walked his ancestral
acres every inch the master. The defect of his features was the thinness
of the lips, and a want of character in a nose which did not accord with a
good forehead. His hands, too, were very large and puffy; his finger-nails