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Foggers know all the game on the places where they work; there is not a hare or a rabbit, a pheasant or a partridge, whose ways are not plain to them. Deer lore is all but extinct, the terms of venery known but to a few; few, indeed, could correctly name the parts of a buck if one were sent them.
The foggers, being about so very early in the morning, they are out at the dawn, have found out a good many game secrets in their time. If the deer were outside the forest at any hour it was sure to be when the dew was on the grass, and thus they noticed that with the hay truss on their heads they could walk up quite close occasionally.
"The raiders were a half mile away from where they should have come down if the plasmoids were what they wanted. And from what I saw of them, they weren't nearly a big enough gang for a job of that kind." "I thought so, too," Mihul said. "They were topflight professionals, in any case. I got a glimpse of some of their equipment. Knockout guns foggers and that was a fast car!"
Perhaps it was through the foggers, as the labourers are called who fodder cattle and carry out the hay in the morning and evening, that deer poachers of old discovered that they could approach the deer by carrying a bundle of sweet-smelling hay, which overcame the scent of the body and baffled the buck's keen nostrils till the thief was within shot.
This is plain, straightforward labour, and cannot be looked upon as hard work. If the cattle want no further attention, the foggers and milkers turn their hands after breakfast to whatever may be going on. Some considerable time is taken up in slicing roots with the machine, or chaff-cutting monotonous work of a simple character, and chiefly consisting in turning a handle.
Near by are the hay-ricks and cow-pen where a metallic rattling sound rises every now and then the bull in the shed moving his neck and dragging his chain through the ring. More than one of the hay-ricks have been already half cut away, for the severe winter makes the cows hungry, and if their yield of milk is to be kept up they must be well fed, so that the foggers have plenty to do.
In summer, on the contrary, the hours are long, and the pay high which more than makes up for the winter reduction. Reviewing the work the labourer actually does in winter, it seems fair and just to state that the foggers, or milkers, i.e. the men who attend on cattle, the carters, and the shepherds, work hard, continuously, and often in the face of the most inclement weather.
With this he could prod the sloughs and ascertain their depth, or use it as a leaping-pole; and if threatened by sturdy rogues whirl it about their heads as a quarter-staff. Wars and famines were then terrible realities men's minds were full of them, and superstition flourished. The foggers and shepherds saw signs in the sky and read the stars.
Foggers and milkers, if their cottages are near at hand, having finished the first part of the day's work, can often go back home to breakfast, and, if they have a good woman in the cottage, find a fire and hot tea ready.
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