To the keeper alone of the time-honoured gathering seen on the lawn
before the house on an early October morning have the years been kind.
Over his face the winds have swept lightly; hardly an impression has
been made on his complexion by the sun, moon, and stars, and the hail,
snow, frosts, and mists of the year. On his forehead half a century of
life has ploughed no furrows. His cheeks are free of wrinkles; there
are no crow's-feet about the outside corners of his eyes. He holds the
secret of youth. His cheeks might be a girl's; there is a smoothness
and suppleness about the skin of his face. Still the muscles of his
arms stand out with proud fulness. And his eyes remain the keenest
spy-glasses of the party. His limbs are supple and free; a gamekeeper
hardly knows the meaning of stiffness. But you may notice now that he
straddles mightily over the gate which of old he vaulted with the glide
of the fallow bucks in the park. And if you were with him when, at the
end of a long day, he goes home to his tea, by chance you might hear
the remark made to his good-wife, "Well, mother, I bain't sorry to sit
down."
He looks his best in autumn; and he feels his best. He is ready for the
test of his labours. He has had worries enough; the rearing season has
been a "shocking bad one," and he has had many late nights, watching
his birds. Perhaps he has had toothache; that is not unknown to
keepers. Often he has been soaked by rain, and more often by the dews
of night and morning. But he has lived all the year in the open and in
the country, and there is the secret of his youth.
* * * * *