A strange-looking traveller, with slouching gait and mouldy wideawake hat, passes through the hamlet occasionally, leading a donkey in a cart.  This is one of the old-fashioned hawkers.  These men are usually poachers or receivers of poached goods.  They are not averse to paying a small sum for a basket of trout or a few partridges, pheasants, hares or rabbits in the game season; whilst in spring they deal in a small way in the eggs of game birds.  As often as not this class of man is accompanied by a couple of dogs, marvellously trained in the art of hunting the coverts and “retrieving” a pheasant or a rabbit which may be crouching in the underwood.  Hares, too, are taken by dogs in the open fields.  One never finds out much about these gentry from the natives.  Even the keeper is reticent on the subject.  “A sart of a harf-witted fellow” is Tom Peregrine’s description of this very suspicious-looking traveller.

The better sort of carrier, who calls daily at the great house with all kinds of goods and parcels from the big town seven miles off, is occasionally not averse to a little poaching in the roadside fields among the hares.  The carriers are a great feature of these rural villages; they are generally good fellows, though some of them are a bit too fond of the bottle on Saturday nights.

The dogs employed by poachers are taught to keep out of sight and avoid keepers and such-like folk.  They know as well as the poacher himself the nature of their trade, and that the utmost secrecy must be observed.  To see them trotting demurely down the road you would never think them capable of doing anything wrong.  A wave of the hand and they are into the covert in a second, ready to pounce like a cat on a sitting pheasant.  One short whistle and they are at their master’s heels again.  If in carrying game in their mouths they spied or winded a keeper, they would in all probability contrive to hide themselves or make tracks for the high road as quickly as possible, leaving their spoil in the thick underwood, “to be left till called for.”

But to return once more to the honest Cotswold labourer.  Occasionally a notice is put up in the village as follows:—­

“There will be a dinner in the manor grounds on July—.  Please bring knives and forks.”

These are great occasions in a Cotswold village.  Knives and forks mean meat; and a joint of mutton is not seen by the peasants more than “once in a month of Sundays.”  Needless to say, there is not much opportunity of studying the language of the country as long as the feast is progressing.  “Silence is golden” is the motto here whilst the viands are being discussed; but afterwards, when the Homeric desire of eating and drinking has been expelled, an adjournment to the club may lead to a smoking concert, and, once started, there are very few Cotswold men who cannot sing a song of at least eighteen verses.  For three hours an uninterrupted stream of music flows forth, not only solos, but occasionally