“Well, don’t you stare at him, young master, when you do get that chance, that’s all.  Some comes down here merely to look at him, as if he was a show, and that puts him in a pretty rage, I promise you; though to get to know him, as I say, is easy enough, if you go the right way about it.  If you were a good rider, for instance, and could lead the field one day when the hunting begins, he’d ask you to dinner to a certainty; or if you could drive stags—­why, he would have given you a hundred pounds last midsummer, when we couldn’t get the beasts to swim the lake.  There’s a pretty mess come o’ that, by-the-by; for, out of the talk there was among the gentlemen about that difficulty, the Squire laid a bet as he would drive stags; not as we do, mind you, but in harness, like carriage-horses; and, cuss me, if he hasn’t had the break out half a dozen times with four red deer in it, and you may see him tearing through the park, with mounted grooms and keepers on the right and left of him, all galloping their hardest, and the Squire with the ribbons, a-holloaing like mad!  For my part, I don’t like such pranks, and would much sooner not be there to see ’em.  There will be mischief some day with it yet, for all that old Lord Orford, down at Newmarket some fifty years ago, used to do the same thing, they say.  It ain’t in nature that stags should be druv four-in-hand, even by Carew.  However, the Squire won his wager; and we haven’t seen none o’ that wild work o’ late weeks, though we may see it again any day.”

“I have heard of that strange exploit,” observed Yorke; “but as driving deer, even in the ordinary way, is not my calling, and as I am no great rider, even if I had a horse, I don’t see how I am to introduce myself to your mad Squire, and yet I have a great fancy for his acquaintance.  Do you think he’d buy any of these drawings, taken in his own park, from his own timber?” The young man touched a portfolio, already well stocked with studies of oak and beech.  “Here is a sketch of the Decoy Pond, for instance, with the oldest tree in the chase beside it; would not that interest him, think you?  You think not?”

“Well, young gentleman,” said the keeper, frankly, “if I say no, it ain’t that I mean any slight to your drawing.  It’s like the tree enough, for certain, with the very hoop of iron as I put round it with my own hands twenty years ago—­and, by the same token, it will want another before this winter’s out; but I don’t think the Squire cares much for such matters.  He might, maybe, just give a look at it, or he might bid you go to the devil for a paper-staining son of a—­well—­what you will.  He does not care a farthing, bless ’ee, for all the great pictures in his own gallery, though they cost his grandfather a mint of money, and are certainly a fine sight—­so far as the frames go.  And, on the other hand, if he happens to be cross-grained that day, he might tear it up before you could say ‘Hold,’ and kick you down the Hall steps into the bargain, as he has done to many a one.  That’s where it is, you see, the Squire is so chancy.”