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"Shootin', ah! av ye'd bin wi' me an' Bill Simmons, two summers ago, ye'd have had more nor enough o' shootin'. The grizzlies are thick as paes, and the buffaloes swarm in the valleys like muskaitoes, not to mintion wolves, and beavers, and badgers, and deer, an' sich like forby the red Injuns; we shot six o' them critters about the legs an' arms in self defence, an' they shot us too they put an arrow dane through the pint o' Bill's nose, an' wan ripped up me left arm, it did."
Fulford imagining rightly that the knowledge of his intentions might deter young Birkenholt from escaping, enjoined strict secrecy on either lad, not intending them to meet till it should be too late to return, and therefore had arranged that Giles should quit the party on the way to Calais, bringing with him Will Wherry, and the horse he rode. Giles had then, been enrolled among the Badgers.
"I am bound for my quarters, I came but to thank you for your goodness to me, and to bid you farewell." "And how as to thy pledge to join us, young man?" demanded Fulford sternly. "I gave no pledge," said Stephen. "I said I would consider of it." "Faint-hearted! ha! ha!" and the English Badgers translated the word to the Germans, and set them shouting with derision.
The sickness brought on by their savage excesses together with the Roman summer had laid low many of the Badgers. When the Prince of Orange drew off the army from the miserable city, scarce seven score of that once gallant troop were in marching order, and Sir John Fulford himself was dying.
Who does not know that a leporarium should be enclosed with masonry walls which are at once smooth and high the one to keep out wild cats and badgers and other such beasts: the other to prevent wolves from getting over. Within should be coverts where the hares may lurk in the day time under bushes and grass, and trees with broad spreading branches to ward off the attacks of the eagle.
As if to taunt the badgers with inability to climb, a swarm of tree-wasps lived in a big nest of wood-pulp suspended from a branch ten feet or so above the "set," and, every afternoon, the badgers, as they waited near the mouth of their dwelling for the darkness to deepen, heard the shrill, long continued humming of the sentinel wasps around the big ball in the tree surely one of the most appetising sounds that could ever reach a badger's ears.
However, Fulford seemed to consider himself one with the party; and he beguiled the way by tales of the doings of the Badgers in Italy and Savoy, which were listened to with avidity by the lads, distracting Stephen from the pain at his heart, and filling both with excitement.
Amyas has slept till luncheon, i. e. till an hour ago: but Sir Richard, in spite of the bustle of last night, was up and in the valley by six o'clock, recreating the valiant souls of himself and two terrier dogs by the chase of sundry badgers.
The host and all the company, used to pot- house quarrels, and perhaps playing into his hands, took little heed; Stephen was dragged insensible into another room, and there the Badgers began hastily to divest him of his prentice's gown, and draw his arms into a buff coat.
Brock and his mate are still in possession of the old burrow beyond the farm; and Brock's sire, a patriarch among badgers, lives, as the comrade of another old male, among the boulders of a rugged hillside a mile from the "set."
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