In this way Denzil found ample food for his hunger for knowledge. In such places and round them, for instance, he watched the whole tribe of woodpeckers, from the great green woodpecker with his yike, yike, yike! to the lesser spotted woodpecker of the sidedrum rattle; also the nuthatch, creeper, and, in its season, the wryneck. All of these live and nest-if a hole in a tree can be called a nest-in old timber, which is seen in the greatest perfection in the park-lands.

At last the time came when he was his own master, free to think and act as he pleased, also to go where he liked, having a trade in his fingers, a small amount of money in his pocket,—not too much of it,—and a stout ash stick in his hand. With sketch-book and pencils in his pocket he started out on his wanderings, intending, whilst his money lasted, to see all he could of the Weald of Surrey, Sussex, and Kent, with all its wealth of animal and bird life, its fish, reptiles, and insects. What was there to prevent a stout, healthy young fellow of twenty-one, unencumbered, with his life and the world before him?

On large buildings in course of construction workmen from various counties and districts will be

found; and, without being naturalists, they will often talk about the wild creatures one or the other has seen in his own district, or in the course of his wanderings. Den's ears were always open to such conversation, and he stored all up in his mind ready for his own benefit when the time came when he should be his own master.

The Weald was not then so well known as it is now. Away started Denzil, as soon as he was free, to see for himself all that his fellow-workmen had told him of. For a time he would stay in some good-hearted forester's cot in the heart of the woods; then away he moved to a moorland region, where the conditions of life varied. St Leonard's forest, Tilgate, Ashdown, and the line of country where the Medway rises, to the point where it reaches the tide, he explored fully. And that was then a rich mine for the naturalist. He was up at daybreak, before the blackcock had got the night dew dried from his glossy plumage, returning again to his lodging at midnight, when even the fern-owls take a short rest from their insect-exterminating labours. Is it possible for that giant night-swallow to feel tired at all? one wonders.

From the Kentish to the Sussex coast, over the hills inland, once more, by lakes, ponds, and streams, over moorlands and through bogs; and then, after five years' prowling and roaming about, home to the foot of the Surrey hills.

CHAPTER XXI.

CHRISTMAS WITH OLD FRIENDS.

BEFORE finally settling down, however, Denzil wrote to his friends Scoot and Winder to say he hoped, if all went well, to be with them on Christmas eve. This news was received all through the fishing quarter with great interest and pleasure.

No traces of delicacy of health, or of the effects of marsh fevers, were visible in the upright stalwart figure, nearly six feet in height, wiry-looking to a degree, and as tough as one of the dyke-eels he had so often speared as a lad, that got out of a train at the smart new station near Marshton that Christmas-time. Denzil felt perfectly bewildered by the many changes that had taken place in the last four

years. Two railways ran over the part where only treacherous swamps had been; where the wild-duck had had its home and the snipe their boggy springs, good streets with rows of houses had already been made. The whole marsh had been drained and become solid ground. The tide no longer flooded the lower part of Marshton; all was changed save the upper portion of the old place, but alterations were imminent even there. After all, it was a better system that would replace the old, and if new blood was coming into the place-in every sense of that expression, for the fisher folk were actually becoming reconciled to marriages between their lasses and the men they regarded as doubtful "furriners "-so much the better for Marshton.

6

Scoot and Winder gazed in astonishment at the man who presented himself in their fishing quarter on that Christmas eve. "An' to think as we niver thought as ye'd live to be a man! our bit of a Reed-bird,' as we called ye," said Winder.

They themselves had developed into a pair of fine healthy bronzed fishermen, as stoutly built as any that ever managed a boat or drew a line.

"Ef 'twaunt fur thet laugh, an' the look in his eyes