THE MISCREANT
'1 remember,' said the old gamekeeper, 'going up to the little lake one day and finding a boy fishing there. He had come on a bicycle. When we asked him he said he had had permission from the agent, and so we left him alone and he went on fishing. Later on we were coming down the hill when a motor-coach passed us on the narrow road and we discovered the boy who had been fishing. He had been involved in an accident when trying to fend himself off a wall with his hand as the coach crowded past. He had, in fact, broken his wrist. We picked him up, took him down to the cottage, gave him first aid and arranged for an ambulance for him. Shortly after I took his bicycle to put it on the train, but just before I sent it I thought I had better take a look and see how he had got on with his fishing. He hadn't caught any- thing, it seemed, but he hadn't done so badly. He had a setting of mallard eggs carefully packed in his bag. I took them and put them under a hen and they hatched out in two days. The ducklings went back where they belonged, but the boy didn't come back to inquire about the eggs or to thank me for doing what 1 had done for him !'
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