'"I've won!" yells grandfeythor, an' tosses his cap i' the air. Bang! says Smithson's second barrel, an' doon comes the two cock pheasants togither. The first had swerved, d'ye see, an' jostled up against the second, an' Smithson cops 'em both wiv his last cartridge an' wins on the post, seventy-six to seventy-five. Gox! but it was the nearest touch an' go thing ever seen i' the North Country, I's warn'd, an' wi' that last cartridge bang gans Crozier Hall.' 'Was there any trickery?' I inquired; 'had Smithson tampered with your grandfather's cartridges, for instance?' 'No, he'd not done that; he couldn't ha' done that, but he had tricked grandfeythor a bit, though it wasn't found out till afterwards. 'The way of it was this: Smithson was a d----d clever feller, ye ken, an' knowin' as he did that grandfeythor had a wunnerfu' way o' pickin' off the pheasants just as they came over the topmost trees, he had sent two or three o' his men i' the night-time, an' had fixed up a young fir right on to the top o' the highest tree, so that Mr. Pheasant had to rise another six feet afore he cam' ower. 'Well, this was just enough to put grandfeythor oot ov his reckonin's, an' when he misses the first one, as he'd never done before, he cannot make it oot, he went clean flustered, thought he must have had a stroke, an' swore he was bewitched, or poisoned, or such like. 'It was a crool thing to do, but it wasn't exactly what ye could call a Jew's swindle--but, damn Smithson aal the same, I says; for here's me, Geordie Crozier, left a po'r orphin i' the warld wi' none o' his fam'ly property to belang to him, 'cept two gifts--the yen for drinkin' an' t'other for gamblin', an' it's damn Smithson, says I.' FOOTNOTES: [1] Northumberland Plate, or Pitmen's Derby. [2] 'Mevvies' = maybe, perhaps. The true Northumbrian is in a threefold danger of betraying his origin: phonetically, by the 'burr'; dialectically, by constant use of 'mevvies,' 'wor' (our), and 'I's warned' (I warrant you); psychologically, by a perpetual readiness to back himself, his dog, or any of his belongings, against any other man's in the world, and for any amount, at a moment's notice. [3] Atlas, presumably. THE SQUIRE'S LAST RIDE 'Ay, that's the priest, the Catholic Priest,' said Eph Milburn, after a white-haired, cassock-clad old gentleman, who had nodded slightly in reply to my companion's greeting, had passed over the bridge and departed out of hearing. 'He looks as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth now,' continued Milburn, a long-legged, ruddy-bearded, hawk-eyed son of the moorlands, 'and aal his time nowadays he spends in his garden over his bees or his flowers, or thumbing his Mass-book in his library; but it wasn't so once-a-day, not he, not when the old Squire was above ground, and he came up by to stop wiv him.