"I daresay it seems to you," continued Blogg, "more like loafing than duty, for me to go mouching round the best part of the day, aye, and at times the best part of the night, too, with this here gun. Not that we're troubled much with poachers here about, they're mostly amytoors here, but they're as full o' tricks as a bag full o' monkeys. I'm mostly a match for 'em you know, for I was a regular myself once, as you can remember. Ah, many's the dark night as I went out a-wirin' in King's Warren parish. I don't know as there weren't more enjyment in those days. We were both younger then, Muster Capt," said the keeper with a sigh. "Ah, but think of your position now," said Capt, who wished to put the man in a good humour, that he might all the sooner shake him off. "Position ain't everything. A head keeper's life is as anxious a time as a frog's in a frying-pan, a hot frying-pan, ye mind me; it's not all tips and perquisites; it's information here and information there, it's night lines in the river and the lake, its wirin' and steel trappin', when it ain't ferrettin' and fish-pison, and what with the boys as cums after the antlers and the nestes, and the children as cums after the blackberries, and the radicals as keeps a dog, a man's hands is very full indeed." "You must have an anxious time," said the sympathizing Capt. "Ah, you may well say that," replied the keeper; "why, in my young days the boys they cum after the nestes, and the men they cum after the game, as is perhaps natural after all, but now they cums after everything. They even grubs up the ferns and the primroses with irons made a-purpose. Why, one of they fern chaps would think nothing of clearing half an acre in a mornin'. They comes after the butterflies with their nets, and a botanizing with their tin candle boxes, and trespassin' comes natural to them. Why, only the other day I caught a feller bottling mud out of a pond, and a-catchin' newts and such like. 'What's your business here?' I said. 'I'm collecting quattic animals,' said he. 'And I suppose you've got permission?' 'Don't you be insolent, my man,' he said; and he shakes his finger at me, for all the world like the Sunday-school teacher used to shake his finger at me when I was a little bit of a chap. 'Don't you try to stop the march of science, my man,' says he. 'I don't care nothin' about the march of science,' says I; 'but if you don't hand over the pair of antlers as you've got up your back, I'll wallop you, master. And after I've walloped you, you and science can march where you please.' But what makes my life a burden to me," continued the keeper, still airing his grievances, "is vermin." Capt started. "What with the weasels, the stoats, and such-like, a man need have his eyes open." "Yes," said Capt; "you need all your powers of observation, I suppose." "You're right there," assented the keeper; "it ain't much as escapes me."