The pheasant falls crash among the nettles and brambles beside the road.

Then a second and older gentleman emerges from the plantation, and after a time a keeper, who picks up the game.
The party then proceed along the road, and coming round the corner the great black retriever runs up to the old woman with the most friendly intentions, but to her intense confusion, for she is just in the act of dropping a lowly curtsey when the dog rubs against her.

The young gentleman smiles at her alarm and calls the dog; the elder walks on utterly indifferent.

A little way up the road the party get over the gate into the meadows on that side, and make for another outlying plantation.
Then, and not till then, does the old woman set out again, upon her slow and laborious journey.

'Filbard be just like a gatepost,' she mutters; 'a' don't take no notice of anybody.' Though she had dropped the squire so lowly a curtsey, and in his presence would have behaved with profound respect, behind his back and out of hearing she called him by his family name without any prefix.