Tom pondered this point long and anxiously as he strode along. “How shall I bring Latter, and, say, Ralph Chaddick, Sir Henry’s powerful head-keeper, to this camp, without starting the game and seeing Scammel run for it into the next woods? If he were once up, he would put a couple of bullets from his double-barrel through any two of us as soon as look at us.” Tom sat on a hill and looked round. Every way were difficulties. They could not approach the camp in any direction without coming into full notice from it. Though to-day all the men were away, it might not be so every day. If any of these were there, the difficulty was greater. Reflecting on these matters, and putting them into all possible shapes, Tom reached the next village, and entered the Cat and Fiddle public-house, and sitting down, called for his pint. As a tramp he did not presume to enter into conversation with the two or three farmers who were chatting over their glasses there. He soon learned that they had all got their harvests over, and were “taking their ease in their inn” a little, in a state of comfortable complacency over their good fortune. As Tom seemed to listen to their discourse with considerable interest, one of them said— “Well, traveller, and have you got your harvest pretty well?” “But middling, sir,” said Tom; “my fields lie rather wide asunder.” “I reckon so,” said the farmer; “and a pretty good stock of gleaners in ’em.” “True, sir,” said Tom. “Yet you manage to get your bread, I daresay?” “Well,” said Tom, “if I don’t get bread I manage to get cake, perhaps, or a piece of cold pudding. I never knew the want of bread, thank God, but once, and then I made a pretty good shift with pie-crust.” “Oh, you did, eh?” said the man, brightening up; for he saw Tom had something in him; and a bit of clever talk was rather a novelty down there. The place was much troubled with stagnation of ideas. “You’re not unreasonable, at any rate,” said the farmer, all the rest kindling up considerably. “No,” said Tom, “not quite as unreasonable as a neighbour of mine, who, when he went home to his dinner, asked his wife why she had not made a pudding. ‘Because,’ said the wife, ‘there was no flour in the house.’ ‘Then,’ said the husband, ‘why did not you make a bit of a dumpling?’” “Bread of idleness, I reckon,” said another, “is sweeter to you, young fellow, than any other, whether white or brown, fine flour or seconds, with a glass of summat strong occasionally to scare the cold off your stomach.”