"Nex' day then these two goes out together, and just ketching sight on 'em, I knowed something was up, but in course I didn't know my chap, and my chap didn't know me, and I sits at home smoking a pipe, for I says to myself, I says: Browsem, I says, there's suthin' up, an' if you can only put salt on that 'ere Ruddle's tail, you'll soon clear the village. You see, I on'y wanted to bring one home to him, and that would have done, for he'd on'y got off two or three times before by the skin of his teeth, and while three or four of his tools was kicking their heels in gaol, my gentleman was feathering his nest all right. "So my chap and Ruddle goes along werry sociable, only every now and then my chap ketches him a cocking one of his old gimlet eyes round at him, while he looked as knowing and deep as an old dog-fox. By and by they gets to a field, and old Ruddle tells my chap to stop by the hedge, and he did, while Ruddle goes looking about a bit slowly and quietly, and last of all he mounts up on a gate and stands with his hand over his hyes. Last of all he walks quietly right out into the middle of the pasture and stoops down, picks up a hare, and holds it kicking and struggling by the ears, when he hugs it up on his arm strokin' on it like you'd see a little girl with a kitten. "My chap feels ready to burst himself with delight to see how old Ruddle had fallen into the trap. First-rate it was, you know--taking a hare in open daylight, and in sight of a witness. So he scuffles up to him, looking as innocent all the time as a babby, and he says to him, he says-- "`My, what a fine un! I never thought as there was another one in England could ha' done that 'ere. You air a deep 'un,' he says, trying hard not to grin. `But aintcher going to kill it?' "A nasty foxy warming, not he though, for when my chap says, says he, `Aintcher going to kill it?' "`What,' he says, `kill the pooty creetur! Oh, no; poor soft pussy, I wouldn't hurt it; let it go, poor thing.' "When if he didn't put it down and let it dart off like a shot, while my chap stood dumbfounded, and staring with his mouth half open, till Ruddle tipped him a wink, and went off and left him. No, sir, there ain't no taking that chap nohow, and they do say it was his hand that fired the shot as killed Squire Todd's keeper in Bunkin's Spinney."