When near enough, Andrew makes out the farmer in his shirt sleeves and then—can he believe his own eyes?—three, four, five miners against the turf-rick; Trevaskis is holding a tubbal in one hand and—yes, a furze-chopper in the other; picks and shovels are piled in front of the miners; Shellal is holding two buckets, no doubt containing water for the terriers; and, by all that’s good, it is a pair of badger-tongs that the Squire has just brought out of the house, his fingers fidgeting with the guard. In short, a more completely equipped party for an assault on a badger’s fortress and, judging by the laughter, a more merry one, it would be difficult to imagine. But the high spirits of Squire, farmer, and miner are not shared by the Earthstopper. The elaborate preparations, no less than the hilarity, seemed to mock him. He foresaw that the day’s proceedings would bring life-long ridicule on himself. The whole countryside would get to hear of Andrew leading the Squire a fool’s chase after a white badger, forsooth! and wherever he went people would jeer at his powers of observation or treat him with silent pity, according to their dispositions. Now after doing his duty to the best of his ability for seven-and-thirty years, and being “plagued to death” well-nigh every other week during the hunting season by badgers scratching out his stoppings and letting the foxes in—an annoyance that perhaps no other Earthstopper in the whole of England has to put up with—for the faithful henchman on whom success depended to be dragged willy-nilly into this business was enough not only to rouse his ire but to shake his fealty to his master. If Andrew was ever vexed in his life, he was vexed now, “vexed as fire.” Near the Squire he would not go, unless sent for, not he; to a peremptory summons he would turn a deaf ear. Still, enraged though he was, he would not shirk his duty, hopeless as his task might be. He would search till nightfall, though a dozen giggling louts dogged his heels. He knew that the badger’s holt might possibly be on Cairn Kenidzhek, but it was about one chance in a hundred. He jumped down from the trap before it reached the gate where the Squire was awaiting it, and seizing the opportunity whilst Sir Bevil was talking to the keeper, jumped the wall and going up to Trevaskis, asked him if he knew of a badger’s earth on the hill.