The gamekeeper's cottage stands at the end of the oak lane. An orchard surrounds his dwelling, the brown boughs now drooping with ripened fruit. Under an overhanging sycamore is a kennel of silky-coated setters and a brace of spaniels. The former have beautifully-domed heads and large soft eyes. The spaniels with their pendulous ears are a black and a brown. Pheasant pens are scattered about the orchard, each containing half-a-dozen birds. In a disused shed are traps for taking game, and nets and snares found in rabbit runs or taken from poachers. The keeper does not always take these engines when he finds them, but waits quietly until they are visited by the "moucher;" then he makes a double capture. Few of the poachers, however, leave their traps after dark, and only the casual is caught in this way. At the other end of the orchard divisional boxes are ranged round an old barn-like building where pheasants' eggs are hatched. A shaggy terrier, with fresh mould upon its nose, peeps from beneath the shed doorway. Drowsy bluebottles buzz about the vermin larder, and under the apple-trees are straw-thatched hives. Contented pigeons coo and bask on the hot slates of the barn roof, and bird-sounds are everywhere. These blocks, upon which sit their falcons, act as a reminder of an old English sport fast passing away. These are merlins and peregrines, kept for a friend by the keeper, who is fond of hawking. The merlins can pull down partridges, while the peregrines are flown at larger game. No sport so exhilarating as falconry, none so fascinating.

The interior of the keeper's cottage is as characteristic as its surroundings. Here are guns of every description—from the old-fashioned fowling piece and matchlock to the ponderous duck-gun. Above the chimney-piece hangs a modern breechloader with Damascus barrels. The keeper admires the delicate mechanism of this, but deprecates the spirit of the age which produced it. Such cunningly-devised engines will make old-fashioned sport, or what he calls "wild shooting," extinct. By this he means the traversing of rough ground in healthful anticipation of a miscellaneous and always uncertain bag. It is this very uncertainty which gives the chief zest to sport. Against the walls are cases of stuffed birds, with a red squirrel or a white stoat to relieve the feathers. In one case a knot-hole is imitated from which peer three young weasels; and an old one is descending the hole with a dead bird in its mouth. All these are portrayed to the life by the keeper's own hand. Looking at the contents of the cases, he deplores his want of ornithological knowledge in earlier years. Among the stuffed specimens are a Greenland falcon, a pair of hobbies, several rare owls, swallow-tailed kite, hoopoe, rose-coloured pastor, and others equally rare.

The gamekeeper's life is essentially an outdoor one. He is far from populous towns, and needs but little assistance. Poachers rarely come to his preserves in gangs, and a couple of village mouchers he can easily manage. His powerful frame has once been the seat of great strength, though now it needs but a glance to show that his eye is less keen and his hand less firm. Still he is quick to detect, and with his hard-hitting muzzle-loader he rarely misses. Given favourable conditions he is almost infallible with the gun, though he gives his game law. He cannot now cover his extended ground in a single day, and perhaps does less night watching than formerly. His beat covers a widely diversified district with almost every species of game. The pheasants wander about the woods and copses; the partridge are among the corn and stubble; and rabbits pop in and out everywhere. Hares haunt the meadows and upland fields, and snipe go away from the marshes. Woodcock come to the wet woods, and a host of sea-haunting creatures feed along the bay. There is a heronry in the wood, and pigeons build in the larches. Of the habits of these creatures the keeper is full; and if he is garrulous he is always instructive. By observing, he has found that animals and birds have stated times and well-defined routes. Exactly at the same hour, according to the sun, the partridges and pheasants resort to the same spots. Hares follow the tracks day by day, and rooks fly morning and evening along the same valleys. Nightly, herons stalk the pools and the otter traces the mountain burns to their source. At noon a sparrow-hawk speeds by the covert, and at evening a kestrel hangs over the rickyard. In the afternoon, regularly, weasels run along the old wall; and as these things the flowers in their times of opening and closing are not less constant.

The keeper's domain encloses a park in which are red deer and fallow. Sometimes he has to shoot a fawn for the "great house." This he singles out, hitting it if possible just behind the shoulder. In season he must provide a certain "head" of game. Twice weekly he procures this, and takes it to the hall. For its proper hanging in the larder he is responsible. When the keeper wants game he knows to a yard where it may be found—where the birds will get up and in what direction they will go away. If a hare, he knows the gate or smoot through which it will pass, and out of this latter fact he makes capital. It is well known to poachers that when once a hare has been netted there is no chance of its being taken again in like manner. Rather than go through a second time, even though a "lurcher" be but a yard behind, it will either "buck" the gate or take the fence. Consequently the keeper has netted every hare on his ground. This greatly reduces the poacher's chances, and wire snares are now the only engines that can be successfully used. Spring and summer are taken up with breeding and rearing pheasants, and this is an anxious time. The work is not difficult but arduous. And then so much of the keeper's work is estimated by the head of game he can turn out. This result is tangible, and one that can be seen by both his master and visitors. There is nothing to show for long and often fruitless night-watching but rheumatism; and so the keeper appreciates all the more readily the praise accorded him for the number of well-grown birds he can show at the covert side. After pheasant-shooting in October the serious winter work of the keeper begins. Each week he has to kill from three to five hundred rabbits, which are sent to the markets of the large manufacturing towns. He can employ what engines against them he pleases, but the number must be produced. Firing a hundred shots a day is now more jarring than it was once; it has made him slightly deaf, and he adopts other means of destruction. He works the warrens in winter, but long waiting for a glutted ferret in frost and snow is not pleasant. Under favourable conditions, however, a great many rabbits may be taken in this way. Iron spring traps are used in the rabbit tracks, but these are impracticable on a large scale; and the pheasants and partridges, which run much, are apt to be caught in them. Moreover it is now illegal to set these traps in the open. The most certain and wholesale method of capture is by the "well-trap." This is a pit, placed immediately opposite to a hole in the fence through which the rabbits run from the woods to the field or pasture. Through the "run" a wooden trough is inserted, and as the rabbits pass through the floor opens beneath their weight and they drop into the "well." Immediately the pressure is removed the floor springs back to its original position; and thus a score or more rabbits may often be taken in a single night. In the construction of these traps rough and unbarked wood is used, and even then the rabbits will not take them for weeks. Then they become familiar, the weather washes away all scent, and the "well-trap" is a wholesale engine of capture. The rabbits of course are taken alive. These the keeper stretches across his knee, dislocating the spine. English rabbits are degenerating in size, and the introduction of some of the continental varieties would be beneficial. With the rabbits in autumn great quantities of wood-pigeons are sent away, the birds at this time becoming exceedingly plump and fat. An almost incredible number of acorns may be found in the crop of a single bird when the former have fallen.

These are a few of the keeper's duties. He himself has a russet, weather-beaten face, bounded by silvery hair. He might stand for a picture of a highly-idealised member of his class. So secluded is his cottage that he locks the door but once a year, and that on Christmas Eve. He can remember when there was larger game than now, when badgers and wild cats were not uncommon. One of his ancestors was an inveterate deer-stealer, as the parish books show. Then the red-deer roamed almost wild on the fells. To-day he has but one regret—that he was not contemporary with the wolf, the wild boar, and the bear. Of these in Britain he has just read an account, together with the vast primitive forests through which they roamed.

II.
THE CHARCOAL BURNERS.

The humid climate of the north-west of England is peculiarly favourable to the growth of coppice-wood; and scattered along the slopes of the valleys copses prevail, consisting for the most part of oak, ash, birch, and hazel. This growth beautifully clothes the hill-slopes, and in addition to taking away the bareness, brings to them much animal and bird life; and besides this, the young timber is fairly remunerative. The coppice woods are cut every fifteen years, and the ground set apart to it pays about equal to that devoted to grazing. This is owing to the fact that every part of the wood is well suited to some particular use, and finds a ready market. What these uses are will be presently seen.

As to the beauty and well-woodedness which the copses give to the north-west valleys there can be no question; and that life abounds in them which was foreign to the bare Fells is made equally clear by traversing them at almost any season of the year. Shelter they give, too, which is always important in districts subject to mountain storms. Metallic-lustred and brightly-coloured lichens light up the floor of the wood, the rabbits rustle through; innumerable birds are there, and dormice hang their ball-like nests among the hazel boughs. As the coppice grows the squirrel comes to the nuts, wood pigeons coo, and jays screech in the glades. Even a few pheasants have wandered here, and an occasional woodcock breeds among the dead oak leaves.

Just as the kindly sheltering woods have brought birds which are foreign to the district, so they have brought human settlers, and standing above on the bare Common we see rising from the trees columns of pale blue smoke. In the primitive cottages from whence these come reside the charcoal burners. Men they are whose lives glide on almost without influence from the outside world—quiet workers of many virtues. They observe well times and seasons, are full of country proverbs, wise as to signs of wind and weather, and draw deductions from the nature around them. Their occupation is such as keeps them in the woods for months at a spell, not even leaving them on Sundays. And so it comes that the decay of the black bryony berries and the rustle of the dead oak leaves have lessons for them; and as the winds of autumn sough through the bare branches, they are conscious that a time will come when they too must pass away. Piety in men so lived may seem strange, but when a man stands face to face with nature, by far the best elements of his nature are developed. He is brought, as it were, back to his primitive life, and is more a man than the dweller in towns.

During the summer we have tramped through the coppice woods. These will be felled when autumn comes round, having grown their fifteen years. And to one unaccustomed to such rapid growth the progress made would be somewhat astonishing. The trees are spindle high. The ash-poles are straight and smooth, the young oaks radiant in rich chestnut, the hazels catkin-covered, and the frail birch—the lady of the woods—towers her silvery stem afar up. Of course, when cut, each species of tree has some special virtue—some quality in which it most excels. The young oaks, for instance, are felled at the time of ascending sap in early summer, as then the bark is easily "peeled." This is extensively used in the process of tanning. The torn staves are used in making baskets and hoops. The "afflictive birch, cursed by unlettered idle youth," has other uses than that which the quotation would seem likely to imply. The variously sized boughs are used in making crates, and the wood is also extensively used by the cottagers as fire "eldin," which may be detected when in proximity to the cottages. The use, however, to which the majority of the wood is put is bobbin-turning—quite an extensive and important industry in the northern valleys.

The enemies of the trees, and the only ones which stop their growth, are two. Insects with their borings, and rabbits. The latter, in severe winters, eat the bark of the young trees to a surprising height from the ground, and by so doing impede their growth.

The second industry to which the coppice woods give rise, and by far the most interesting, is the charcoal burning, almost peculiar to this part of the country. We shall detail it as practised in the extensive Honeybee Woods. At the felling of the copse the wood is roughly divided into two "sets." The thick upright poles, of whatever tree, are stacked for "bobbin wood," and the thinner parts await the charcoal burners. These are also the men that from autumn to spring are busily employed in cutting, stacking, and arranging the wood.

The first months of spring are employed in peeling the oak for its bark, and from early summer into autumn the actual charcoal burning is done. The men who take part in the lonely trade live in rude huts in the woods, thatched with heather and bracken. Heaps of dried ferns serve them for beds, and their wants are few. Their huts are fixed first as to shelter and the presence of water, then with regard to proximity to their labours. From this ground they are never absent, the burning wood heaps requiring constant attention and aid from a quick eye as to change of wind and the coming of rain. The burning is conducted as follows: The faggots (from one to four feet in length and about one and a half inches thick) are built up round a vertical stake, which forms the centre of the mass, until the heap has attained considerable dimensions. It is round, and represents a low stack terminating in an apex at the top. When sufficient faggots have been piled up, the whole is covered with turf and wet sand, so as to exclude the air. The heap, now about thirty feet in diameter, is flattened by beating with spades, and made to present a smooth dome-like surface. The vertical stake is withdrawn from the centre, and lights are dropped down the passage left, to ignite the wood. The air has been carefully excluded so as to regulate the burning of the heap. From the centre the fire gradually spreads outwards until it reaches the edges. The burners always have in readiness large screens to regulate the supply of air, and these are planted on that side of the heap from which the wind blows. The screens consist of wooden hurdles intertwined with dead grass, dried fern, and bracken. Of course success depends upon the slow and equal burning of the whole mass. A shifting wind sometimes ill regulates the supply of air and fires the heap. When this occurs nothing can stop it, and the charcoal is completely spoiled. This, however, from the great watchfulness of the men, is generally avoided. To return to the heap. The products of combustion escape by the channel occasioned by the withdrawal of the vertical stake. The process is continued from twenty to thirty hours, when smoke and fumes seem to come off every part alike. This is a sign to put out the fire, which is done by applying water. The faggots have now been converted into charcoal. The critical part of the operation, and the one that wants most experience, is to catch the heap when it is "enough"—that is when it is neither overdone nor underdone. After allowing half a day for cooling, the charcoal is taken out, put into sacks, and carted away. Three or four men generally work together and have four heaps in hand at one time. At night, especially when there is much wind, the burners work by shifts. The charcoal when carted away is just half the weight of the wood from which it has been prepared. Much of the charcoal prepared hereabouts is used in smelting at the Backbarrow and other neighbouring ironworks. Iron so smelted is of much higher commercial value than that obtained by the ordinary processes. Charcoal burning, consequently, is likely to continue a lucrative employment for many years to come, especially as coppice woods—the raw material—thrive so abundantly in the district.

To watch these men at their lonely employment in the woods is well worth a visit. They and their work are alike interesting, and the woods which provide their employment are fascinating at all seasons. A nearer acquaintance with the workers will reveal the fact that they know the "herbs and simples of the woods," and also much of the contents of an old "herbal" lying in the hut. In the virtues of plants they have great belief, and can tell of interesting traits in the life-history of wild flowers. We believe, too, that they exercise "free right and warren" of the woods where they reside, and of this no one seems to care to deprive them. They are pleasant, primitive fellows wonderfully intelligent as to out-door questions, and command the respect of every one with whom they come in contact. We might have said that their necessary victuals are supplied periodically from the outside world, but in domestic matters they do all things for themselves.

III.
THE FORESTER.

Walking in the woods, we met the old man standing over the prostrate form of a fallen monster that had been uprooted by the wind. He was about to lop off the branches, and was trimming the bole with an axe. The tree had brought several others with it of younger growth, and he had just finished clearing to obtain a space wherein to work. Black bryony berries were twined about the lower branches, as were the dead leaves of honeysuckle. These are among the natural enemies of the old man, as he considers them injurious to timber. His woods are wide, and constitute his little world. There is little in or of them which he does not know, even to the flowers and birds. For these he has quaint provincial names of his own. Thus he speaks of the fallowchat, the nettle-creeper, and the reed-wren—meaning the wheatear, white-throat, and reed-warbler. The frail anemone he knows as the wind-flower, coltsfoot is one of his rustic remedies for coughs, and the early purple orchids are to him "crow's feet." His "little red mouse that rustles among the dead leaves and is coloured like a hare" is our wood-mouse; and sometimes he finds among the hazel branches the ball-like nests of the dormice. He knows that wherever fungi grows there is death, and the tree lighted up by the brightly-coloured bosses he marks with a red cross, which is as signing the warrant of its doom. He follows the yaffle, and wherever it pecks the trees he knows that decay has begun within. This applies to all the woodpeckers, who are infallible valuers of growing timber, and all trees which they attack are marked out for the axe. Often on the outside the boles are apparently sound, and it is hard to believe that the heart-wood is decayed; but the winged wood-prophets never err.

It matters not what living thing crosses our path, the old man names it, even to the insects. He tells how these are instrumental in producing the oak-galls, and points out the insidious attacks and borings of weevils. Of all trees the elm has most enemies. He tears off a bit of bark from a still growing tree, and reveals a labyrinth of channels radiating on two sides from a central line. The Scolytus he simply calls "elm-borer," though from his conversation it is plain that he is a close observer, and knows the whole life-history of the insect. And thus, in addition to his special knowledge of woodcraft, he knows the time of the coming of the birds, of the retiring of the insect hosts, and the habitats of the flowers.

The woodman lives in a stone hut, near the confines of what was once an extensive forest, through which trooped vast herds of deer, both red and fallow. His weather-beaten face, which in colour resembles a ripe russet apple, tells of long exposure to summer's sun and winter's cold. His hair is white, and his form as yet but slightly bowed. The only other occupant of the hut is a girl grandchild, who has long lived with him. Neither have ever been more than a dozen miles from the spot, nor care to. Nominally the old man's work is to look after the woods of one valley. This has been his life-work, and he has no longing for change. He knows nothing of what goes on without a narrow circle, and his Bible and an occasional country newspaper constitute his sole literature.

As becomes his craft he never tires of talking of trees. In his woods the giant oak is common, with its gnarled and twisted bole, its wildly reticulated branches, its lichens, and its host of insect visitors. He has himself detected the two varieties of the oak, and points out the difference. In one case the acorns are borne on stalks, in the other they are sessile. Of these he speaks as the long and short-stalked kinds. He has no confidence in the popular theory that the wood of the one greatly excels that of the other. He has worked both, and has not discovered any substantial difference. In late autumn he gathers from beneath the oaks huge sacksful of acorns, of which he disposes to the farmers. Next comes the majestic beech, with its smooth bole and olive-grey bark. The old man recalls its wondrous flood of green in spring, and its not less glorious gold in autumn.

Some modern Orlando even haunts the forest hereabouts, and abuses the young trees with carving not Rosalind but "Emilie" on their barks. The sentiment which stops the growth of the young beeches appeals to no finer sense within the bosom of the old man. And so he roundly denounces the wandering lover who has carved thereon the name he adores, in no unmeasured terms.

In summer a few purple beeches light up the wood, and the old man is surprised to learn that all trees of this variety sprang from a single tree which was found growing wild in the midst of one of the immense forests of Thuringia. But more than all the interest that attaches to the trees are the uses to which their wood is put. The little church on the Fellside opposite consists internally of oak from this very wood; and so, too, do half the beams and rafters in the parish. The hard, close-grained wood of the beech, too, is used for a great variety of purposes as well as fuel. Interspersed throughout the wood are numbers of ash-trees, soon to be arrayed in feathery lightness, but now more reminding us of Tennyson's naturalistic simile, "Black as ashbuds in March." The toughness and elasticity of the wood of the ash are well known, and here is an opportunity for the display of the timber genius of our old friend. There is, he tells us, little else than this about the yard of the village wheelwright. Cart shafts are made from it, as are the primitive agricultural implements used in the valley; of like wood is his own axe handle and spade shaft. In the country infinite almost are the uses of the ash.

In the middle of the wood, and coming down to the stream sides, are a retinue of fringed elms, both Campestris and Montana. Some of these have attained to an immense size, and are at one with the scenery. But in the open spots of the wood—in the glades where life most prevails—are the beautiful birches, with their striped, silvery bark. Well does this tree merit its appellation of "lady of the woods." There is none so frail, so graceful, nor so generally beautiful. Almost every part of the birch is used and for a great variety of purposes. In spring the delicate green of the larch hangs in trailing tassels, and contrasts well with the dark green foliage of the indigenous pine. The old forester has an "Unter den Linden" equal, at least in beauty, to any in Europe, and in summer the trees are a veritable haunt of summer wings. The field maple and the sycamore are here, and interspersed in the open spaces a few white stemmed walnuts. These in autumn yield a rich harvest to the forester. The horse-chestnut is common, and then come a host of trees of minor growth. All the wild fruit trees are here, and hang out glories of snowy and pink blossoms in spring—the pear, the cherry, and the wild apple. Sombre yews that set off the pale green of the woodlands are plentiful, and in them the cushats and the jays build. In addition to these there are the wild service tree, white beam, and mountain ash, the last called by the old man the rowan.

Planting and thinning and felling constitute the work of the woodman throughout the year. But there are a thousand little offshoots of woodcraft of which he has knowledge and which he indulges at times. Like the charcoal burners, he holds free right and warren of the woods. He can make many primitive lures for taking wild creatures, and is an adept at "gins" and "springs" for destroying vermin. In winter he sets snares for woodcock and snipe. He is a great favourite with the resident boys at the neighbouring grammar school, and procures them mice and squirrels and birds' eggs. He makes wooden pegs and teeth for the farmers, and various little articles for the farm women. He sells bundles of faggots and sticks for supporting peas, and a dozen other perquisites, all products of the woodlands. The embrowned nuts of autumn he turns to profitable account. In the forest are numerous hazel copses, together forming many acres. In autumn the old man was surprised to receive a visit from a burly man in a gig. He told the woodman, in a dialect differing from his own, that he was a "badger;" and then and there made an astounding bid for the nuts. The old man closed with the handsome offer, and this sum now adds annually to his otherwise slight income.