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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13730 ***
+
+The Amateur Poacher
+
+by Richard Jefferies
+
+
+Contents
+
+ PREFACE
+ CHAPTER I. THE FIRST GUN
+ CHAPTER II. THE OLD PUNT: A CURIOUS “TURNPIKE”
+ CHAPTER III. TREE-SHOOTING: A FISHING EXPEDITION
+ CHAPTER IV. EGG-TIME: A “GIP”-TRAP
+ CHAPTER V. WOODLAND TWILIGHT: TRAITORS ON THE GIBBET
+ CHAPTER VI. LURCHER-LAND: “THE PARK”
+ CHAPTER VII. OBY, AND HIS SYSTEM: THE MOUCHER’S CALENDAR
+ CHAPTER VIII. CHURCHYARD PHEASANTS: BEFORE THE BENCH
+ CHAPTER IX. LUKE, THE RABBIT-CONTRACTOR: THE BROOK PATH
+ CHAPTER X. FARMER WILLUM’S PLACE: SNIPE-SHOOTING
+ CHAPTER XI. FERRETING: A RABBIT-HUNTER
+ CHAPTER XII. A WINTER NIGHT: OLD TRICKS:
+PHEASANT-STALKING: MATCHLOCK VERSUS BREECH-LOADER: CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The following pages are arranged somewhat in the order of time,
+beginning with the first gun, and attempts at shooting. Then come the
+fields, the first hills, and woods explored, often without a gun, or
+any thought of destruction: and next the poachers, and other odd
+characters observed at their work. Perhaps the idea of shooting with a
+matchlock, or wheel-lock, might, if put in practice, at least afford
+some little novelty.
+
+R.J.
+
+
+
+
+THE AMATEUR POACHER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+THE FIRST GUN
+
+
+They burned the old gun that used to stand in the dark corner up in the
+garret, close to the stuffed fox that always grinned so fiercely.
+Perhaps the reason why he seemed in such a ghastly rage was that he did
+not come by his death fairly. Otherwise his pelt would not have been so
+perfect. And why else was he put away up there out of sight?—and so
+magnificent a brush as he had too. But there he stood, and mounted
+guard over the old flintlock that was so powerful a magnet to us in
+those days. Though to go up there alone was no slight trial of moral
+courage after listening to the horrible tales of the carters in the
+stable, or the old women who used to sit under the hedge in the shade,
+on an armful of hay, munching their crusts at luncheon time.
+
+The great cavernous place was full of shadows in the brightest summer
+day; for the light came only through the chinks in the shutters. These
+were flush with the floor and bolted firmly. The silence was intense,
+it being so near the roof and so far away from the inhabited parts of
+the house. Yet there were sometimes strange acoustical effects—as when
+there came a low tapping at the shutters, enough to make your heart
+stand still. There was then nothing for it but to dash through the
+doorway into the empty cheese-room adjoining, which was better lighted.
+No doubt it was nothing but the labourers knocking the stakes in for
+the railing round the rickyard, but why did it sound just exactly
+outside the shutters? When that ceased the staircase creaked, or the
+pear-tree boughs rustled against the window. The staircase always
+waited till you had forgotten all about it before the loose worm-eaten
+planks sprang back to their place.
+
+Had it not been for the merry whistling of the starlings on the thatch
+above, it would not have been possible to face the gloom and the teeth
+of Reynard, ever in the act to snap, and the mystic noises, and the
+sense of guilt—for the gun was forbidden. Besides which there was the
+black mouth of the open trapdoor overhead yawning fearfully—a standing
+terror and temptation; for there was a legend of a pair of pistols
+thrown up there out of the way—a treasure-trove tempting enough to make
+us face anything. But Orion must have the credit of the courage; I call
+him Orion because he was a hunter and had a famous dog. The last I
+heard of him he had just ridden through a prairie fire, and says the
+people out there think nothing of it.
+
+We dragged an ancient linen-press under the trapdoor, and put some
+boxes on that, and finally a straight-backed oaken chair. One or two of
+those chairs were split up and helped to do the roasting on the kitchen
+hearth. So, climbing the pile, we emerged under the rafters, and could
+see daylight faintly in several places coming through the starlings’
+holes. One or two bats fluttered to and fro as we groped among the
+lumber, but no pistols could be discovered; nothing but a cannon-ball,
+rusty enough and about as big as an orange, which they say was found in
+the wood, where there was a brush in Oliver’s time.
+
+In the middle of our expedition there came the well-known whistle,
+echoing about the chimneys, with which it was the custom to recall us
+to dinner. How else could you make people hear who might be cutting a
+knobbed stick in the copse half a mile away or bathing in the lake? We
+had to jump down with a run; and then came the difficulty; for black
+dusty cobwebs, the growth of fifty years, clothed us from head to foot.
+There was no brushing or picking them off, with that loud whistle
+repeated every two minutes.
+
+The fact where we had been was patent to all; and so the chairs got
+burned—but one, which was rickety. After which a story crept out, of a
+disjointed skeleton lying in a corner under the thatch. Though just a
+little suspicious that this might be a _ruse_ to frighten us from a
+second attempt, we yet could not deny the possibility of its being
+true. Sometimes in the dusk, when I sat poring over “Koenigsmark, the
+Robber,” by the little window in the cheese-room, a skull seemed to
+peer down the trapdoor. But then I had the flintlock by me for
+protection.
+
+There were giants in the days when that gun was made; for surely no
+modern mortal could have held that mass of metal steady to his
+shoulder. The linen-press and a chest on the top of it formed, however,
+a very good gun-carriage; and, thus mounted, aim could be taken out of
+the window at the old mare feeding in the meadow below by the brook,
+and a “bead” could be drawn upon Molly, the dairymaid, kissing the
+fogger behind the hedge, little dreaming that the deadly tube was
+levelled at them. At least this practice and drill had one useful
+effect—the eye got accustomed to the flash from the pan, instead of
+blinking the discharge, which ruins the shooting. Almost everybody and
+everything on the place got shot dead in this way without knowing it.
+
+It was not so easy as might be supposed to find proper flints. The best
+time to look for them was after a heavy storm of rain had washed a
+shallow channel beside the road, when you might select some hardy
+splinters which had lain hidden under the dust. How we were found out
+is not quite clear: perhaps the powder left a smell of sulphur for any
+one who chanced to go up in the garret.
+
+But, however that may be, one day, as we came in unexpectedly from a
+voyage in the punt, something was discovered burning among the logs on
+the kitchen hearth; and, though a desperate rescue was attempted,
+nothing was left but the barrel of our precious gun and some crooked
+iron representing the remains of the lock. There are things that are
+never entirely forgotten, though the impression may become fainter as
+years go by. The sense of the cruel injustice of that act will never
+quite depart.
+
+But they could not burn the barrel, and we almost succeeded in fitting
+it to a stock of elder. Elder has a thick pith running down the centre:
+by removing that the gouge and chisel had not much work to do to make a
+groove for the old bell-mouthed barrel to lie in. The matchlock, for as
+such it was intended, was nearly finished when our hopes were dashed to
+the ground by a piece of unnatural cunning. One morning the breechpiece
+that screwed in was missing. This was fatal. A barrel without a
+breechpiece is like a cup without a bottom. It was all over.
+
+There are days in spring when the white clouds go swiftly past, with
+occasional breaks of bright sunshine lighting up a spot in the
+landscape. That is like the memory of one’s youth. There is a long dull
+blank, and then a brilliant streak of recollection. Doubtless it was a
+year or two afterwards when, seeing that the natural instinct could not
+be suppressed but had better be recognised, they produced a real gun
+(single-barrel) for me from the clock-case.
+
+It stood on the landing just at the bottom of the dark flight that led
+to the garret. An oaken case six feet high or more, and a vast dial,
+with a mysterious picture of a full moon and a ship in full sail that
+somehow indicated the quarters of the year, if you had been imitating
+Rip Van Winkle and after a sleep of six months wanted to know whether
+it was spring or autumn. But only to think that all the while we were
+puzzling over the moon and the ship and the queer signs on the dial a
+gun was hidden inside! The case was locked, it is true; but there are
+ways of opening locks, and we were always handy with tools.
+
+This gun was almost, but not quite so long as the other. That dated
+from the time between Stuart and Hanover; this might not have been more
+than seventy years old. And a beautiful piece of workmanship it was: my
+new double breechloader is a coarse common thing to compare with it.
+Long and slender and light as a feather, it came to the shoulder with
+wonderful ease. Then there was a groove on the barrel at the breech and
+for some inches up which caught the eye and guided the glance like a
+trough to the sight at the muzzle and thence to the bird. The stock was
+shod with brass, and the trigger-guard was of brass, with a kind of
+flange stretching half-way down to the butt and inserted in the wood.
+After a few minutes’ polishing it shone like gold, and to see the
+sunlight flash on it was a joy.
+
+You might note the grain of the barrel, for it had not been browned;
+and it took a good deal of sand to get the rust off. By aid of a little
+oil and careful wiping after a shower it was easy to keep it bright.
+Those browned barrels only encourage idleness. The lock was a trifle
+dull at first, simply from lack of use. A small screwdriver soon had it
+to pieces, and it speedily clicked again sweet as a flute. If the
+hammer came back rather far when at full-cock, that was because the
+lock had been converted from a flint, and you could not expect it to be
+absolutely perfect. Besides which, as the fall was longer the blow was
+heavier, and the cap was sure to explode.
+
+By old farmhouses, mostly in exposed places (for which there is a
+reason), one or more huge walnut trees may be found. The provident folk
+of those days planted them with the purpose of having their own
+gunstocks cut out of the wood when the tree was thrown. They could then
+be sure it was really walnut, and a choice piece of timber thoroughly
+well seasoned. I like to think of those times, when men settled
+themselves down, and planted and planned and laid out their gardens and
+orchards and woods, as if they and their sons and sons’ sons, to the
+twentieth generation, were sure to enjoy the fruit of their labour.
+
+The reason why the walnuts are put in exposed places, on the slope of a
+rise, with open aspect to the east and north, is because the walnut is
+a foolish tree that will not learn by experience. If it feels the
+warmth of a few genial days in early spring, it immediately protrudes
+its buds; and the next morning a bitter frost cuts down every hope of
+fruit for that year, leaving the leaf as black as may be. Wherefore the
+east wind is desirable to keep it as backward as possible.
+
+There was a story that the stock of this gun had been cut out of a
+walnut tree that was thrown on the place by my great-grandfather, who
+saw it well seasoned, being a connoisseur of timber, which is, indeed,
+a sort of instinct in all his descendants. And a vast store of
+philosophy there is in timber if you study it aright.
+
+After cleaning the gun and trying it at a mark, the next thing was to
+get a good shot with it. Now there was an elm that stood out from the
+hedge a little, almost at the top of the meadow, not above
+five-and-twenty yards from the other hedge that bounded the field. Two
+mounds could therefore be commanded by any one in ambush behind the
+elm, and all the angular corner of the mead was within range.
+
+It was not far from the house; but the ground sank into a depression
+there, and the ridge of it behind shut out everything except just the
+roof of the tallest hayrick. As one sat on the sward behind the elm,
+with the back turned on the rick and nothing in front but the tall elms
+and the oaks in the other hedge, it was quite easy to fancy it the
+verge of the prairie with the backwoods close by.
+
+The rabbits had scratched the yellow sand right out into the grass—it
+is always very much brighter in colour where they have just been at
+work—and the fern, already almost yellow too, shaded the mouths of
+their buries. Thick bramble bushes grew out from the mound and filled
+the space between it and the elm: there were a few late flowers on them
+still, but the rest were hardening into red sour berries. Westwards,
+the afternoon sun, with all his autumn heat, shone full against the
+hedge and into the recess, and there was not the shadow of a leaf for
+shelter on that side.
+
+The gun was on the turf, and the little hoppers kept jumping out of the
+grass on to the stock: once their king, a grasshopper, alighted on it
+and rested, his green limbs tipped with red rising above his back.
+About the distant wood and the hills there was a soft faint haze, which
+is what Nature finishes her pictures with. Something in the atmosphere
+which made it almost visible: all the trees seemed to stand in a liquid
+light—the sunbeams were suspended in the air instead of passing
+through. The butterflies even were very idle in the slumberous warmth;
+and the great green dragon-fly rested on a leaf, his tail arched a
+little downwards, just as he puts it when he wishes to stop suddenly in
+his flight.
+
+The broad glittering trigger-guard got quite hot in the sun, and the
+stock was warm when I felt it every now and then. The grain of the
+walnut-wood showed plainly through the light polish: it was not
+varnished like the stock of the double-barrel they kept padlocked to
+the rack over the high mantelpiece indoors. Still you could see the
+varnish. It was of a rich dark horse-chestnut colour, and yet so bright
+and clear that if held close you could see your face in it. Behind it
+the grain of the wood was just perceptible; especially at the grip,
+where hard hands had worn it away somewhat. The secret of that varnish
+is lost—like that of the varnish on the priceless old violins.
+
+But you could feel the wood more in my gun: so that it was difficult to
+keep the hand off it, though the rabbits would not come out; and the
+shadowless recess grew like a furnace, for it focussed the rays of the
+sun. The heat on the sunny side of a thick hedge between three and four
+in the afternoon is almost tropical if you remain still, because the
+air is motionless: the only relief is to hold your hat loose; or tilt
+it against your head, the other edge of the brim on the ground. Then
+the grass-blades rise up level with the forehead. There is a delicious
+smell in growing grass, and a sweetness comes up from the earth.
+
+Still it got hotter and hotter; and it was not possible to move in the
+least degree, lest a brown creature sitting on the sand at the mouth of
+his hole, and hidden himself by the fern, should immediately note it.
+And Orion was waiting in the rickyard for the sound of the report, and
+very likely the shepherd too. We knew that men in Africa, watched by
+lions, had kept still in the sunshine till, reflected from the rock, it
+literally scorched them, not daring to move; and we knew all about the
+stoicism of the Red Indians. But Ulysses was ever my pattern and model:
+that man of infinite patience and resource.
+
+So, though the sun might burn and the air become suffocating in that
+close corner, and the quivering line of heat across the meadow make the
+eyes dizzy to watch, yet not a limb must be moved. The black flies came
+in crowds; but they are not so tormenting if you plunge your face in
+the grass, though they titillate the back of the hand as they run over
+it. Under the bramble bush was a bury that did not look much used; and
+once or twice a great blue fly came out of it, the buzz at first
+sounding hollow and afar off and becoming clearer as it approached the
+mouth of the hole. There was the carcass of a dead rabbit inside no
+doubt.
+
+A humble-bee wandering along—they are restless things—buzzed right
+under my hat, and became entangled in the grass by my ear. Now we knew
+by experience in taking their honey that they could sting sharply if
+irritated, though good-tempered by nature. How he “burred” and buzzed
+and droned!—till by-and-by, crawling up the back of my head, he found
+an open space and sailed away. Then, looking out again, there was a
+pair of ears in the grass not ten yards distant: a rabbit had come out
+at last. But the first delight was quickly over: the ears were short
+and sharply pointed, and almost pinkly transparent.
+
+What would the shepherd say if I brought home one of his hated enemies
+no bigger than a rat? The young rabbit made waiting still more painful,
+being far enough from the hedge to get a clear view into the recess if
+anything attracted his notice. Why the shepherd hated rabbits was
+because the sheep would not feed where they had worn their runs in the
+grass. Not the least movement was possible now—not even that little
+shifting which makes a position just endurable: the heat seemed to
+increase; the thought of Ulysses could hardly restrain the almost
+irresistible desire to stir.
+
+When, suddenly, there was a slight rustling among the boughs of an oak
+in the other hedge, as of wings against twigs: it was a woodpigeon,
+better game than a rabbit. He would, I knew, first look round before he
+settled himself to preen his feathers on the branch, and, if everything
+was still while that keen inspection lasted, would never notice me.
+This is their habit—and the closer you are underneath them the less
+chance of their perceiving you: for a pigeon perched rarely looks
+straight downwards. If flying, it is just the reverse; for then they
+seem to see under them quicker than in any other direction.
+
+Slowly lifting the long barrel of the gun—it was fortunate the sunlight
+glancing on the bright barrel was not reflected towards the oak—I got
+it to bear upon the bird; but then came a doubt. It was all
+eight-and-twenty yards across the angle of the meadow to the oak—a
+tremendous long shot under the circumstances. For they would not trust
+us with the large copper powder-flask, but only with a little
+pistol-flask (it had belonged to the pair of pistols we tried to find),
+and we were ordered not to use more than a charge and a half at a time.
+That was quite enough to kill blackbirds. (The noise of the report was
+always a check in this way; such a trifle of powder only made a slight
+puff.)
+
+Shot there was in plenty—a whole tobacco-pipe bowl full, carefully
+measured out of the old yellow canvas money-bag that did for a shot
+belt. A starling could be knocked off the chimney with this charge
+easily, and so could a blackbird roosting in a bush at night. But a
+woodpigeon nearly thirty yards distant was another matter; for the old
+folk (and the birdkeepers too) said that their quills were so hard the
+shot would glance aside unless it came with great force. Very likely
+the pigeon would escape, and all the rabbits in the buries would be too
+frightened to come out at all.
+
+A beautiful bird he was on the bough, perched well in view and clearly
+defined against the sky behind; and my eye travelled along the groove
+on the breech and up the barrel, and so to the sight and across to him;
+and the finger, which always would keep time with the eye, pulled at
+the trigger.
+
+A mere puff of a report, and then a desperate fluttering in the tree
+and a cloud of white feathers floating above the hedge, and a heavy
+fall among the bushes. He was down, and Orion’s spaniel (that came
+racing like mad from the rickyard the instant he heard the discharge)
+had him in a moment. Orion followed quickly. Then the shepherd came up,
+rather stiff on his legs from rheumatism, and stepped the distance,
+declaring it was thirty yards good; after which we all walked home in
+triumph.
+
+Molly the dairymaid came a little way from the rickyard, and said she
+would pluck the pigeon that very night after work. She was always ready
+to do anything for us boys; and we could never quite make out why they
+scolded her so for an idle hussy indoors. It seemed so unjust. Looking
+back, I recollect she had very beautiful brown eyes.
+
+“You mind you chaws the shot well, measter,” said the shepherd, “afore
+you loads th’ gun. The more you chaws it the better it sticks
+the-gither, an’ the furder it kills um;” a theory of gunnery that which
+was devoutly believed in in his time and long anticipated the wire
+cartridges. And the old soldiers that used to come round to haymaking,
+glad of a job to supplement their pensions, were very positive that if
+you bit the bullet and indented it with your teeth, it was perfectly
+fatal, no matter to what part of the body its billet took it.
+
+In the midst of this talk as we moved on, I carrying the gun at the
+trail with the muzzle downwards, the old ramrod, long disused and
+shrunken, slipped half out; the end caught the ground, and it snapped
+short off in a second. A terrible disaster this, turning everything to
+bitterness: Orion was especially wroth, for it was his right next to
+shoot. However, we went down to the smithy at the inn, to take counsel
+of the blacksmith, a man of knowledge and a trusty friend. “Aha!” said
+he, “it’s not the first time I’ve made a ramrod. There’s a piece of
+lancewood in the store overhead which I keep on purpose; it’s as tough
+as a bow—they make carriage-shafts of it; you shall have a better rod
+than was ever fitted to a Joe Manton.” So we took him down some
+pippins, and he set to work on it that evening.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+THE OLD PUNT: A CURIOUS “TURNPIKE”
+
+
+The sculls of our punt, being short and stout, answered very well as
+levers to heave the clumsy old craft off the sand into which it sank so
+deeply. That sheltered corner of the mere, with a shelving sandy shore,
+and a steep bank behind covered with trees, was one of the best places
+to fish for roach: you could see them playing under the punt in shoals
+any sunny day.
+
+There was a projecting bar almost enclosing the creek, which was quite
+still, even when the surf whitened the stony strand without, driven
+before a wet and stormy south-wester. It was the merest routine to
+carry the painter ashore and twist the rotten rope round an exposed
+root of the great willow tree; for there was not the slightest chance
+of that ancient craft breaking adrift. All our strength and the
+leverage of the sculls could scarcely move her, so much had she
+settled. But we had determined to sail that lovely day to visit the
+island of Calypso, and had got all our arms and munitions of war
+aboard, besides being provisioned and carrying some fruit for fear of
+scurvy. There was of course the gun, placed so as not to get wet; for
+the boat leaked, and had to be frequently baled out with a tin mug—one
+that the haymakers used.
+
+Indeed, if we had not caulked her with some dried moss and some stiff
+clay, it is doubtful if she would have floated far. The well was full
+of dead leaves that had been killed by the caterpillars and the blight,
+and had fallen from the trees before their time; and there were one or
+two bunches of grass growing at the stern part from between the
+decaying planks.
+
+Besides the gun there was the Indian bow, scooped out inside in a
+curious way, and covered with strange designs or coloured
+hieroglyphics: it had been brought home by one of our people years
+before. There was but one man in the place who could bend that bow
+effectually; so that though we valued it highly we could not use it. By
+it lay another of briar, which was pliable enough and had brought down
+more than one bird.
+
+Orion hit a rabbit once; but though sore wounded it got to the bury,
+and, struggling in, the arrow caught the side of the hole and was drawn
+out. Indeed, a nail filed sharp is not of much avail as an arrowhead;
+you must have it barbed, and that was a little beyond our skill. Ikey
+the blacksmith had forged us a spearhead after a sketch from a picture
+of a Greek warrior; and a rake-handle served as a shaft. It was really
+a dangerous weapon. He had also made us a small anchor according to
+plan; nor did he dip too deeply into our pocket-money.
+
+Then the mast and square-sail, fitted out of a window-blind, took up a
+considerable space; for although it was perfectly calm, a breeze might
+arise. And what with these and the pole for punting occasionally, the
+deck of the vessel was in that approved state of confusion which always
+characterises a ship on the point of departure. Nor must Orion’s
+fishing-rod and gear be forgotten, nor the cigar-box at the stern (a
+present from the landlady at the inn) which contained a chart of the
+mere and a compass.
+
+With a “yeo—heave-ho!” we levered her an inch at a time, and then
+loosened her by working her from side to side, and so, panting and
+struggling, shoved the punt towards the deep. Slowly a course was
+shaped out of the creek—past the bar and then along the edge of the
+thick weeds, stretching so far out into the water that the moorhen
+feeding near the land was beyond reach of shot. From the green matted
+mass through which a boat could scarcely have been forced came a slight
+uncertain sound, now here now yonder, a faint “suck-sock;” and the
+dragon-flies were darting to and fro.
+
+The only ripple of the surface, till broken by the sculls, was where
+the swallows dipped as they glided, leaving a circle of tiny wavelets
+that barely rolled a yard. Past the low but steep bluff of sand rising
+sheer out of the water, drilled with martins’ holes and topped by a
+sapling oak in the midst of a great furze bush: yellow bloom of the
+furze, tall brake fern nestling under the young branches, woodbine
+climbing up and bearing sweet coronals of flower.
+
+Past the barley that came down to the willows by the shore—ripe and
+white under the bright sunshine, but yonder beneath the shadow of the
+elms with a pale tint of amber. Past broad rising meadows, where under
+the oaks on the upper ground the cattle were idly lying out of the
+sultry heat.
+
+Then the barren islands, strewn with stone and mussel-shells glistening
+in the sunshine, over which in a gale the waves made a clean sweep,
+rendered the navigation intricate; and the vessel had to be worked in
+and out, now scraping against rocky walls of sandstone, now grounding
+and churning up the bottom, till presently she floated in the bay
+beneath the firs. There a dark shadow hung over the black water—still
+and silent, so still that even the aspens rested from their rustling.
+
+Out again into the sunshine by the wide mouth of the Green River, as
+the chart named the brook whose level stream scarce moved into the
+lake. A streak of blue shot up it between the banks, and a shrill pipe
+came back as the kingfisher hastened away. By the huge boulder of
+sarsen, whose shoulder projected but a few inches—in stormy times a
+dangerous rock to mariners—and then into the unknown narrow seas
+between the endless osier-beds and withy-covered isles.
+
+There the chart failed; and the known landmarks across the open
+waters—the firs and elms, the green knoll with the cattle—were shut out
+by thick branches on either hand. In and out and round the islets,
+sounding the depth before advancing, winding now this way, now that,
+till all idea of the course was lost, and it became a mere struggle to
+get forward. Drooping boughs swept along the gunwales, thick-matted
+weeds cumbered the way; “snags,” jagged stumps of trees, threatened to
+thrust their tops through the bottom; and, finally, panting and weary
+of poling through the maze, we emerged in a narrow creek all walled in
+and enclosed with vegetation.
+
+Running her ashore on the soft oozy ground, we rested under a great
+hawthorn bush that grew at the very edge, and, looking upwards, could
+see in the canopy above the black interlaced twigs of a dove’s nest.
+Tall willow poles rose up all around, and above them was the deep blue
+of the sky. On the willow stems that were sometimes under water the
+bark had peeled in scales; beneath the surface bunches of red fibrous
+roots stretched out their slender filaments tipped with white, as if
+feeling like a living thing for prey.
+
+A dreamy, slumberous place, where the sedges slept, and the green flags
+bowed their pointed heads. Under the bushes in the distant nook the
+moorhen, reassured by the silence, came out from the grey-green grass
+and the rushes. Surely Calypso’s cave could not be far distant, where
+she
+
+    with work and song the time divides,
+And through the loom the golden shuttle guides.
+
+
+For the Immortals are hiding somewhere still in the woods; even now I
+do not weary searching for them.
+
+But as we rested a shadow fell from a cloud that covered the sun, and
+immediately a faint sigh arose from among the sedges and the reeds, and
+two pale yellow leaves fell from the willows on the water. A gentle
+breeze followed the cloud, chasing its shadow. Orion touched his rod
+meaningly. So I stepped ashore with the gun to see if a channel could
+be found into the open water, and pushed through the bush. Briar and
+bramble choked the path, and hollow willow stoles; but, holding the gun
+upright, it was possible to force through, till, pushing between a belt
+of reeds and round an elder thicket, I came suddenly on a deep, clear
+pool—all but walking into it. Up rose a large bird out of the water
+with a bustling of wings and splashing, compelled to “rocket” by the
+thick bushes and willow poles. There was no time to aim; but the old
+gun touched the shoulder and went off without conscious volition on my
+part.
+
+The bird flew over the willows, but the next moment there was a heavy
+splash somewhere beyond out of sight. Then came an echo of the report
+sent back from the woods adjoining, and another, and a third and
+fourth, as the sound rolled along the side of the hill, caught in the
+coombes and thrown to and fro like a ball in a tennis-court. Wild with
+anxiety, we forced the punt at the bulrushes, in the corner where it
+looked most open, and with all our might heaved it over the weeds and
+the mud, and so round the islet into the next pool, and thence into the
+open water. It was a wild duck, and was speedily on board.
+
+Stepping the mast and hoisting the sail, we drifted before the faint
+breath of air that now just curled the surface, steering straight
+across the open for the stony barren islands at the mouth of the bay.
+The chart drawn in pencil—what labour it cost us!—said that there, a
+few yards from the steep shore, was a shoal with deep water round it.
+For some reason there always seemed a slight movement or current—a set
+of the water there, as if it flowed into the little bay.
+
+In swimming we often came suddenly out of a cold into a stratum of warm
+water (at the surface); and perhaps the difference in the temperature
+may have caused the drift, for the bay was in shadow half the day. Now,
+wherever there is motion there will fish assemble; so as the punt
+approached the shoal the sail was doused, and at twenty yards’ distance
+I _put_ the anchor into the water—not dropping it, to avoid the
+splash—and let it slip gently to the bottom.
+
+Then, paying out the cable, we drifted to the edge of the shoal without
+the least disturbance, and there brought up. Orion had his bait
+ready—he threw his line right to windward, so that the float might drag
+the worm naturally with the wind and slight current towards the shoal.
+
+The tiny blue buoy dances up and down on the miniature waves; beyond it
+a dazzling path of gold stretches away to the distant osier-islands—a
+path down which we came without seeing it till we looked back. The
+wavelets strike with a faint “sock-sock” against the bluff overhanging
+bow, and then roll on to the lee-shore close at hand.
+
+It rises steep; then a broad green ledge; and after that, still
+steeper, the face of a long-deserted sand-pit, where high up a rabbit
+sits at the mouth of his hole, within range, but certain to escape even
+if hit, and therefore safe. On the turf below is a round black spot,
+still showing, though a twelvemonth has gone by since we landed with
+half a dozen perch, lit a fire and cooked the fishes. For Molly never
+could “a-bear” perch, because of the hardness of the scales, saying she
+would as soon “scrape a vlint;” and they laughed to scorn our idea of
+skinning them as you do moorhens, whose “dowl” no fingers can pick.
+
+So we lit a fire and blew it up, lying on the soft short grass in a
+state of nature after a swim, there being none to see us but the
+glorious sun. The skinned perch were sweeter than any I have tasted
+since.
+
+“Look!” whispers Orion, suddenly. The quill above the blue buoy nods as
+it lifts over the wavelets—nods again, sinks a little, jerks up, and
+then goes down out of sight. Orion feels the weight. “Two pounds, if
+he’s an ounce!” he shouts: soon after a splendid perch is in the boat,
+nearer three pounds perhaps than two. Flop! whop! how he leaps up and
+down on the planks, soiled by the mud, dulling his broad back and
+barred sides on the grit and sand.
+
+Roaming about like this with the gun, now on the water in the punt, and
+now on land, we gradually came to notice very closely the game we
+wished to shoot. We saw, for instance, that the rabbit when feeding or
+moving freely, unless quickened by alarm, has a peculiar way of
+dwelling upon his path. It almost resembles creeping; for both fore
+feet stop while the hinder come up—one hinder foot slightly behind the
+other, and rather wide apart.
+
+When a fall of snow presents a perfect impression of his passage, it
+appears as if the animal had walked slowly backwards. This deceives
+many who at such times go out to pick up anything that comes in their
+way; for they trace the trail in the wrong direction. The truth is,
+that when the rabbit pauses for the hinder feet to come up he again
+rests momentarily upon these before the two foremost are put forth, and
+so presses not only the paw proper but the whole first joint of the
+hind leg upon the snow. A glance at the hind feet of a rabbit will show
+what I mean: they will be found to display plain signs of friction
+against the ground.
+
+The habit has given the creature considerable power of standing up on
+the hinder feet; he can not only sit on his haunches, but raise himself
+almost upright, and remain in that position to listen for some little
+time. For the same reason he can bark the ash saplings higher up than
+would be imagined: where he cannot reach, the mice climb up and nibble
+straight lines across the young pole, as if done with a single stroke
+from a saw that scraped away the rind but did not reach the wood.
+
+In front of a large rabbit bury the grass will be found discoloured
+with sand at some distance from the mouth of the hole. This is
+explained by particles adherent to the rabbits’ hind feet, and rubbing
+off against the grass blades. Country people call this peculiar gait
+“sloppetting;” and one result of it is that the rabbits wear away the
+grass where they are numerous almost as much as they eat it away.
+
+There was such a space worn by the attrition of feet sprinkled with
+sand before the extensive burrow at the top of the meadow where I shot
+the woodpigeon. These marks suggested to us that we should attempt some
+more wholesale system of capture than shooting. It was not for the mere
+desire of destruction, but for a special purpose, that we turned our
+attention to wiring. The punt, though much beloved, was, like all
+punts, a very bad sailer. A boat with a keel that could tack, and so
+work into the wind’s eye, was our ambition.
+
+The blacksmith Ikey readily purchased every rabbit we obtained at
+sixpence each. Rabbits were not so dear then as now; but of course he
+made a large profit even then. The same rabbits at present would be
+worth fifteen or eighteen pence. Every sixpence was carefully saved,
+but it was clear that a long time must elapse before the goal was
+attained. The blacksmith started the idea of putting up a
+“turnpike”—_i.e._ a wire—but professed ignorance as to the method of
+setting it. That was a piece of his cunning—that he might escape
+responsibility.
+
+The shepherd, too, when obliquely questioned, shook his head, pursed
+his lips, threw his pitching-bar over his shoulder, and marched off
+with a mysterious hint that our friend Ikey would some day put his “vut
+in it.” It did not surprise us that the shepherd should turn his back
+on anything of the kind; for he was a leading man among the “Ranters,”
+and frequently exhorted them in his cottage.
+
+The carter’s lad was about at the time, and for the moment we thought
+of applying to him. He was standing on the threshold of the stable,
+under the horseshoes and weasles’ feet nailed up to keep the witches
+away, teasing a bat that he had found under the tiles. But suddenly the
+dusky thing bit him sharply, and he uttered an oath; while the
+creature, released, flew aimlessly into the elms. It was better to
+avoid him.
+
+Indoors, they would have put a very heavy hand upon the notion had they
+known of it: so we had to rely solely upon the teaching of experiment.
+In the first attempt, a stick that had been put by for the thatcher,
+but which he had not yet split, was cut short and sharpened for the
+plug that prevents the animal carrying away the wire when snared. This
+is driven into the earth; at the projecting end a notch was cut to hold
+the string attached to the end of the wire away from the run.
+
+A smaller stick supported the wire above the ground; this latter only
+just sufficiently thrust into the sward to stand firmly upright. Willow
+was used for this at first; but it is a feeble wood: it split too much,
+or bent and gave way instead of holding the wire in its place. The best
+for the purpose we found were the nut-tree rods that shoot up among the
+hazel thickets, no larger than the shaft of an arrow, and almost as
+straight. A slit about half an inch deep was made in the upper end, and
+in this slit the shank of the wire was sunk. Once or twice the upright
+was peeled; but this was a mistake, for the white wand was then too
+conspicuous. The bark should be left on.
+
+Three copper wires twisted tight formed the snare itself; we twisted
+them like the strands of a rope, thinking it would give more strength.
+The wire projected horizontally, the loop curling downwards. It was
+first set up at a spot where a very broad and much-worn run—more like a
+footpath than a rabbit track—forked into several lesser runs, and at
+about five yards from the hedge. But though adjusted, as we thought,
+with the utmost nicety, no rabbit would put his neck into it—not even
+in the darkness of the night. By day they all played round it in
+perfect safety.
+
+After waiting some time it was removed and reset just over a hole—the
+loop close to the opening. It looked scarcely possible for a rabbit to
+creep out without being caught, the loop being enlarged to correspond
+with the mouth of the hole. For a while it seemed as if the rabbits
+declined to use the hole at all; presently, however, the loop was
+pushed back, showing that one must have got his nose between it and the
+bank and so made a safe passage sideways. A run that crossed the field
+was then selected, and the wire erected at about the middle of it,
+equidistant from either hedge. Near the entrance of the buries the
+rabbits moved slowly, sniffing their way along and pausing every yard
+or so. But they often increased their speed farther away, and sometimes
+raced from one mound to the other. When going at that rate it appeared
+natural to conclude that they would be less careful to pick and choose
+their road.
+
+The theory proved so far correct that next day the upright was down,
+but the wire had snapped and the rabbit was gone. The character of the
+fracture clearly indicated how it had happened: the rabbit, so soon as
+he found his head in the noose, had rolled and tumbled till the wire,
+already twisted tight, parted. Too much twisting, therefore, weakened
+instead of strengthening. Next a single wire, somewhat thicker, was
+used, and set up nearly in the same place; but it broke again.
+
+Finally, two strands of medium size, placed side by side, but only
+twisted once—that is, just enough to keep them together—were employed.
+The lesser loop—the slip-knot, as it might be called—was at the same
+time eased in order to run quicker and take a closer grip. Experiments
+with the hand proved that this style of wire would bear a great strain,
+and immediately answered to a sudden jerk. The running noose slipped
+the more easily because the wires were smooth; when twisted the strands
+checked the noose, the friction causing a slight sound. The wire itself
+seemed nearly perfect; but still no rabbit was caught.
+
+Various runs were tried in succession; the size of the loop, too, was
+now enlarged and now decreased; for once it seemed as if a rabbit’s
+ears had struck it aside, and on another as if, the loop being too
+large or too low down, one of the fore feet had entered and drawn it.
+Had it been the hind leg the noose would have held, because of the
+crook of the leg; but the fore foot came through, leaving the noose
+drawn up to a size not much larger than a finger-ring. To decide the
+point accurately, a full-grown rabbit was shot, and Orion held it in a
+position as near as possible to that taken in running, while I adjusted
+the wire to fit exactly. Still no success.
+
+At last the secret was revealed by a hare. One day, walking up the lane
+with the gun, and peeping over into the ploughed field, I saw a hare
+about sixty yards away. The distance was too great to risk a shot, or
+rather it was preferable to wait for the chance of his coming nearer.
+Stepping back gently behind the bushes, I watched him run to and fro,
+gradually approaching in a zig-zag line that must carry him right
+across in front. I was positive that he had not seen me, and felt sure
+of bagging him; when suddenly—without any apparent cause—up went his
+head, he glanced round, and was off like the wind.
+
+Yet there had not been the faintest noise, and I could not understand
+it, till all at once it occurred to me that it must be the scent. The
+slight, scarcely perceptible, breeze blew in that direction: instantly
+he crossed the current from me he detected it and fled. Afterwards I
+noticed that in the dusky twilight, if the wind is behind him, a hare
+will run straight at you as if about to deliberately charge your legs.
+This incident by the ploughed field explained the failure of the wire.
+Every other care had been taken, but we had forgotten to allow for the
+extreme delicacy of a wild animal’s sense of smell.
+
+In walking to the spot selected for the snare it is best to avoid even
+stepping on the run, and while setting it up to stand back as far as
+convenient and lean forward. The grass that grows near must not be
+touched by the hand, which seems to impart a very strong scent. The
+stick that has been carried in the hand must not be allowed to fall
+across the run: and be careful that your handkerchief does not drop out
+of your pocket on or near it. If a bunch of grass grows very tall and
+requires parting, part it with the end (not the handle) of your stick.
+
+The same holds good with gins, especially if placed for a rat. Some
+persons strew a little freshly plucked grass over the pan and teeth of
+the trap, thinking to hide it; but it not only smells of the hand, but
+withers up and turns brown, and acts as a warning to that wary
+creature. It is a better plan if any dead leaves are lying near to turn
+them over and over with the end of a twig till they fall on the trap,
+that is if they are dry: if wet (unless actually raining at the time),
+should one chance to be left with the drier under surface uppermost,
+the rat may pause on the brink. Now that the remotest chance of leaving
+a scent was avoided the wire became a deadly instrument. Almost every
+morning two or three rabbits were taken: we set up a dozen snares when
+we had mastered the trick. They were found lying at full length in the
+crisp white grass, for we often rose to visit the wires while yet the
+stars were visible. Thus extended a person might have passed within a
+few yards and never noticed them, unless he had an out-of-doors eye;
+for the whiter fur of the belly as they lay aside was barely
+distinguishable from the hoar frost. The blacksmith Ikey sauntered down
+the lane every evening, and glanced casually behind the ash tree—the
+northern side of whose trunk was clothed with dark green velvet-like
+moss—to see if a bag was lying for him there among the nettles in the
+ditch. The rabbits were put in the bag, which was pushed through the
+hedge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+TREE-SHOOTING: A FISHING EXPEDITION
+
+
+Just on the verge and borderland of the territory that could be ranged
+in safety there grew a stunted oak in a mound beside the brook. Perhaps
+the roots had been checked by the water; for the tree, instead of
+increasing in bulk, had expended its vigour in branches so crooked that
+they appeared entangled in each other. This oak was a favourite
+perching-place, because of its position: it could also be more easily
+climbed than straight-grown timber, having many boughs low down the
+trunk. With a gun it is difficult to ascend a smooth tree; these boughs
+therefore were a great advantage.
+
+One warm afternoon late in the summer I got up into this oak; and took
+a seat astride a large limb, with the main trunk behind like the back
+of a chair and about twenty feet above the mound. Some lesser branches
+afforded a fork on which the gun could be securely lodged, and a limb
+of considerable size came across in front. Leaning both arms on this, a
+view could be obtained below and on three sides easily and without
+effort.
+
+The mound immediately beneath was grown over with thick blackthorn, a
+species of cover that gives great confidence to game. A kick or blow
+upon the bushes with a stick will not move anything in an old
+blackthorn thicket. A man can scarcely push through it: nothing but a
+dog can manage to get about. On the meadow side there was no ditch,
+only a narrow fringe of tall pointed grass and rushes, with one or two
+small furze bushes projecting out upon the sward. Behind such bushes,
+on the slope of the mound, is rather a favourite place for a rabbit to
+sit out, or a hare to have a form.
+
+The brook was shallow towards the hedge, and bordered with flags, among
+which rose up one tall bunch of beautiful reeds. Some little way up the
+brook a pond opened from it. At the entrance the bar of mud had hardly
+an inch of water; within there was a clear small space, and the rest
+all weeds, with moorhens’ tracks. The farther side of the pond was
+covered with bramble bushes. It is a good plan to send the dogs into
+bushes growing on the banks of ponds; for though rabbits dislike water
+itself they are fond of sitting out in such cover near it. A low
+railing enclosed the side towards me: the posts had slipped by the
+giving way of the soil, and hung over the still pool.
+
+One of the rails—of willow—was eaten out into hollow cavities by the
+wasps, which came to it generation after generation for the materials
+of their nests. The particles they detach are formed into a kind of
+paste or paper: in time they will quite honeycomb a pole. The third
+side of the pond shelved to the “leaze,” that the cattle might drink.
+From it a narrow track went across the broad field up the rising ground
+to the distant gateway leading to the meadows, where they grazed on the
+aftermath. Marching day by day, one after the other in single file, to
+the drinking-place, the hoofs of the herd had cut a clean path in the
+turf, two or three inches deep and trodden hard. The reddish soil thus
+exposed marked the winding line athwart the field, through the tussocky
+bunches.
+
+By the pond stood a low three-sided merestone or landmark, the initials
+on which were hidden under moss. Up in the tree, near the gun, there
+was a dead branch that had decayed in the curious manner that seems
+peculiar to oak. Where it joined the trunk the bark still remained,
+though covered with lichen, and for a foot or so out; then there was a
+long space where the bark and much of the wood had mouldered away;
+finally, near the end the bough retained its original size and the bark
+adhered. At the junction with the trunk and at the extremity its
+diameter was perhaps three inches; in the middle rather less than half
+as much. The grey central piece, larger and darker at either end,
+suggested the thought of the bare neck of a vulture.
+
+Far away, just rising above the slope of the leaze, the distant tops of
+elms, crowded with rooks’ nests (not then occupied), showed the site of
+the residence of an old gentleman of whom at that time we stood in much
+fear. The “Squire” of Southlands alarmed even the hardened carters’
+lads as much by the prestige of a singular character as by the
+chastisement he personally gave those who ventured into his domain. Not
+a bird’s nest, not a nut, must be touched: still less anything that
+could be called game. The watch kept was so much the stricter because
+he took a personal part in it, and was often round the fields himself
+armed with a great oak staff. It seemed, indeed, as if the preservation
+of the game was of far greater importance to him than the shooting of
+it afterwards. All the fowls of the air flocked to Southlands, as if it
+had been a refuge; yet it was not a large estate. Into the forest we
+had been, but Southlands was a mystery, a forbidden garden of delight,
+with the terror of an oaken staff (and unknown penalties) turning this
+way and that. Therefore the stunted old oak on the verge—the moss-grown
+merestone by the pond marked the limit—was so favourite a
+perching-place.
+
+That beautiful afternoon I leaned both arms idly on the great bough
+that crossed in front of the seat and listened to the “Caw—caw!” of the
+rooks as they looked to see if the acorns were yet ripening. A dead
+branch that had dropped partly into the brook was swayed continually up
+and down by the current, the water as it chafed against it causing a
+delicious murmur. This lulled me to sleep.
+
+I woke with a start, and had it not been for the bough crossing in
+front must have fallen twenty feet. Looking down into the meadow as
+soon as my eyes were thoroughly open, I instantly noticed a covey of
+young partridges a little way up beside the hedge among the molehills.
+The neighbourhood of those hillocks has an attraction for many birds,
+especially in winter. Then fieldfares, redwings, starlings, and others
+prefer the meadows that are dotted with them. In a frost if you see a
+thrush on a molehill it is very likely to thaw shortly. Moles seem to
+feel the least change in the temperature of the earth; if it slackens
+they begin to labour, and cast up, unwittingly, food for the thrushes.
+
+It would have been easy to kill three or four of the covey, which was a
+small one, at a single shot; but it had been a late summer, and they
+were not full-grown. Besides which, they roosted, I knew, about the
+middle of the meadow, and to shoot them near the roost would be certain
+to break them up, and perhaps drive them into Southlands. “Good
+poachers preserve their own game:” so the birds fed safely, though a
+pot shot would not have seemed the crime then that it would now. While
+I watched them suddenly the old bird “quat,” and ran swiftly into the
+hedge, followed by the rest. A kestrel was hovering in the next meadow:
+when the beat of his wings ceased he slid forward and downwards, then
+rose and came over me in a bold curve. Well those little brown birds in
+the blackthorn knew that, fierce as he was, he dared not swoop even on
+a comparatively open bush, much less such thick covert, for fear of
+ruffling his proud feathers and beating them out. Nor could he follow
+them through the intricate hidden passages.
+
+In the open water of the pond a large jack was basking in the sunshine,
+just beneath the surface; and though the shot would scatter somewhat
+before reaching him, he was within range. If a fish lies a few inches
+under water he is quite safe from shot unless the muzzle of the gun is
+so close that the pellets travel together like a bullet. At a distance
+the shot is supposed to glance as it strikes the water at an angle; for
+that reason the elevation of the tree was an advantage, since from it
+the charge would plunge into the pool. A jack may be killed in some
+depth of water when the gun is nearly perpendicularly above the mark;
+but in any case the aim must be taken two inches or more, according to
+circumstances, beneath the apparent position of the fish, to allow for
+refraction.
+
+Sometimes the jack when hit comes to the surface belly upwards, but
+sometimes keeps down or sinks, and floats a considerable distance away
+from the spot; so that in the muddy water disturbed by the shot it is
+difficult to find him. If a snake be shot at while swimming he will
+sometimes sink like a stone, and can be seen lying motionless at the
+bottom. After we got hold of a small deer rifle we used to practise at
+the snakes in the mere—aiming at the head, which is about the size of a
+nut, and shows above the surface wobbling as they move. I recollect
+cutting a snake’s head clean off with a ball from a pistol as he
+hastened away through the grass.
+
+In winter, when the jacks came up and lay immediately under the ice,
+they could be easily shot. The pellets cut a round hole through an inch
+and a half of ice. The jack now basking in the pond was the more
+tempting because we had often tried to wire him in vain. The difficulty
+was to get him if hit. While I was deliberating a crow came flying low
+down the leaze, and alighted by the pond. His object, no doubt, was a
+mussel. He could not have seen me, and yet no sooner did he touch the
+ground than he looked uneasily about, sprang up, and flew straight
+away, as if he had smelt danger. Had he stayed he would have been shot,
+though it would have spoiled my ambush: the idea of the crows picking
+out the eyes of dying creatures was always peculiarly revolting to me.
+
+If the pond was a haunt of his, it was too near the young partridges,
+which were weakly that season. A kestrel is harmless compared to a
+crow. Surely the translators have wrongly rendered Don Quixote’s remark
+that the English did not kill crows, believing that King Arthur,
+instead of dying, was by enchantment turned into one, and so fearing to
+injure the hero. Must he not have meant a rook?*
+
+[Note: It has since been pointed out to me that the Don may have meant
+a raven]
+
+
+Soon afterwards something moved out of the mound into the meadow a long
+distance up: it was a hare. He came slowly along beside the hedge
+towards me—now stopping and looking into it as if seeking a convenient
+place for a form, having doubtless been disturbed from that he had
+first chosen. It was some minutes before he came within range: had I
+been on the ground most likely he would have scented me, the light air
+going that way; but being in the tree the wind that passed went high
+over him. For this reason a tree ambush is deadly. It was necessary to
+get the line of sight clear of twigs, which check and divert shot, and
+to take a steady aim; for I had no second barrel, no dog, and had to
+descend the tree before running. Some leaves were blackened by the
+flame: the hare simply fell back, stretched his hind legs, quivered,
+and lay still. Part of the leaf of a plant was fixed in his teeth; he
+had just had a nibble.
+
+With this success I was satisfied that day; but the old oak was always
+a favourite resort, even when nothing particular was in hand. From
+thence, too, as a base of operations, we made expeditions varying in
+their object with the season of the year.
+
+Some distance beyond the stunted oak the thick blackthorn hedge was
+succeeded by a continuous strip of withy-bed bordering the brook. It
+often occurred to us that by entering these withies it would be
+possible to reconnoitre one side of Southlands; for the stream skirted
+the lower grounds: the tall willows would conceal any one passing
+through them. So one spring morning the attempt was made.
+
+It was necessary to go on hands and knees through the mowing grass for
+some yards while passing an open space where the blackthorn cover
+ended, and then to leap a broad ditch that divided the withy-beds from
+the meadow. The lissom willow wands parted easily and sprang back to
+their places behind, leaving scarce a trace. Their slender tops rose
+overhead; beneath, long dead grasses, not yet quite supplanted by the
+spring growth, filled the space between. These rustled a little under
+foot, but so faint a sound could scarcely have been audible outside;
+and had any one noticed it it would have been attributed to a hare or a
+fox moving: both are fond of lying in withy-beds when the ground is
+dry.
+
+The way to walk noiselessly is to feel with the foot before letting
+your weight press on it; then the dead stick or fallen hemlock is
+discovered and avoided. A dead stick cracks; the dry hollow hemlock
+gives a splintering sound when crushed. These old hemlock stems were
+numerous in places, together with “gicksies,” as the haymakers call a
+plant that resembles it, but has a ribbed or fluted instead of a smooth
+stalk. The lads use a long “gicks” cut between the joints as a tube to
+blow haws or peggles at the girls. When thirsty, and no ale is handy,
+the men search for one to suck up water with from the brook. It is
+difficult to find one free from insects, which seem to be remarkably
+fond of anything hollow. The haymakers do not use the hemlock, thinking
+it would poison the water; they think, too, that drinking through a
+tube is safer when they are in a great heat from the sun than any other
+way.
+
+Nor is it so easy to drink from a stream without this simple aid. If
+the bank be flat it is wet, and what looks like the grass of the meadow
+really grows out of the water; so that there it is not possible to be
+at full length. If the bank be dry the level of the water is several
+inches lower, and in endeavouring to drink the forehead is immersed;
+often the water is so much lower than its banks that it is quite
+impossible to drink from it lying. By the edge grasses,
+water-plantains, forget-me-nots, frequently fill the space within
+reach. If you brush these aside it disturbs the bottom, and the mud
+rises, or a patch of brown “scum” comes up and floats away. A cup,
+though gently used, generally draws some insects in with the water,
+though the liquid itself be pure. Lapping with the hollowed palm
+requires practice, and, unless the spot be free from weeds and of some
+little depth, soon disturbs the bottom. But the tube can be inserted in
+the smallest clear place, and interferes with nothing.
+
+Each of us carried a long hazel rod, and the handle of a “squailer”
+projected from Orion’s coat-pocket. For making a “squailer” a teacup
+was the best mould: the cups then in use in the country were rather
+larger than those at present in fashion. A ground ash sapling with the
+bark on, about as thick as the little finger, pliant and tough, formed
+the shaft, which was about fifteen inches long. This was held upright
+in the middle of a teacup, while the mould was filled with molten lead.
+It soon cooled, and left a heavy conical knob on the end of the stick.
+If rightly thrown it was a deadly missile, and would fly almost as true
+as a rifle ball. A rabbit or leveret could thus be knocked over; and it
+was peculiarly adapted for fetching a squirrel out of a tree, because,
+being so heavy at one end, it rarely lodged on the boughs, as an
+ordinary stick would, but overbalanced and came down.
+
+From the outlook of the oak some aspen trees could be seen far up in
+the withy-beds; and it had been agreed that there the first essay of
+the stream should be made. On arriving at these trees we paused, and
+began to fix the wires on the hazel rods. The wire for fish must slip
+very easily, and the thinner it is, if strong enough, the better,
+because it takes a firmer grip. A single wire will do; but two thin
+ones are preferable. Thin copper wire is as flexible as thread. Brass
+wire is not so good; it is stiffer, and too conspicuous in the water.
+
+At the shank end a stout string is attached in the middle of its
+length. Then the wire is placed against the rod, lying flat upon it for
+about six inches. The strings are now wound round tightly in opposite
+directions, binding it to the stick, so that at the top the ends cross
+and are in position to tie in the slight notch cut for the purpose. A
+loop that will allow four fingers to enter together is about large
+enough, though of course it must be varied according to the size of the
+jack in view. Heavy jacks are not often wired, and scarcely ever in
+brooks.
+
+For jack the shape of the loop should be circular; for trout it should
+be oval, and considerably larger in proportion to the apparent bulk of
+the fish. Jack are straight-grown and do not thicken much in the
+middle; with trout it is different. The noose should be about six
+inches from the top of the rod. Orion said he would go twenty yards
+farther up; I went direct from the centre of the withy-bed to the
+stream.
+
+The bank rose a little above the level of the withy-bed; it was a broad
+mound full of ash stoles and willow—the sort that is grown for poles.
+At that spot the vines of wild hops had killed all the underwood,
+leaving open spaces between the stoles; the vines were matted so
+thickly that they hid the ground. This was too exposed a place, so I
+went back and farther up till I could just hear Orion rustling through
+the hemlocks. Here the dead grass and some elder bushes afforded
+shelter, and the water could be approached unseen.
+
+It was about six or eight inches deep; the opposite shore was bordered
+for several yards out with flags and rushes. The cattle nibbled their
+tender tops off, as far as they could reach; farther out they were
+pushing up straight and pointed. The rib and groove of the flag so
+closely resemble those of the ancient bayonet that it might be supposed
+the weapon was modelled from the plant. Indoors among the lumber there
+was a rusty old bayonet that immediately called forth the comparison:
+the modern make seem more triangular.
+
+The rushes grew nearer the shore of the meadow—the old ones yellow, the
+young green: in places this fringe of rush and sedge and flag must have
+been five or six yards wide, and it extended as far as could be seen up
+the brook. No doubt the cattle trod in the edge of the firm ground by
+degrees every year to get at the water, and thus widened the marsh. It
+was easy to understand now why all the water-fowl, teal and duck,
+moorhen and snipe, seemed in winter to make in this direction.
+
+The ducks especially exercised all our ingenuity and quite exhausted
+our patience in the effort to get near them in winter. In the large
+water-meadows a small flock sometimes remained all day: it was possible
+to approach near enough by stalking behind the hedges to see the colour
+of the mallards; but they were always out of gunshot. This place must
+be full of teal then; as for moorhens, there were signs of them
+everywhere, and several feeding in the grass. The thought of the sport
+to be got here when the frosty days came was enough to make one wild.
+
+After a long look across, I began to examine the stream near at hand:
+the rushes and flags had forced the clear sweet current away from the
+meadow, so that it ran just under the bank. I was making out the brown
+sticks at the bottom, when there was a slight splash—caused by Orion
+about ten yards farther up—and almost at the same instant something
+shot down the brook towards me. He had doubtless landed a jack, and its
+fellow rushed away. Under a large dead bough that had fallen across its
+top in the stream I saw the long slender fish lying a few feet from the
+bank, motionless save for the gentle curving wave of the tail edges. So
+faint was that waving curl that it seemed caused rather by the flow of
+the current than the volition of the fish. The wings of the swallow
+work the whole of the longest summer day, but the fins of the fish in
+running water are never still: day and night they move continuously.
+
+By slow degrees I advanced the hazel rod, keeping it at first near to
+and parallel with the bank, because jack do not like anything that
+stretches across them; and I imagine other fish have the same dislike
+to right angles. The straight shadow even seems to arouse suspicion—no
+boughs are ever straight. Perhaps, if it were possible to angle without
+a rod, there would be more success, particularly in small streams. But
+after getting the stick almost out far enough, it became evident that
+the dead branch would not let me slip the wire into the water in front
+of the jack in the usual way. So I had to draw it back again as
+gradually as it had been put forth.
+
+With fish everything must be done gradually and without a jerk. A
+sudden jerking movement immediately alarms them. If you walk gently by
+they remain still, but start or lift the arm quickly and they dart for
+deep water. The object of withdrawing the rod was to get at and enlarge
+the loop in order that it might be slipped over his tail, since the
+head was protected by the bough. It is a more delicate operation to
+pass the wire up from behind; it has to go farther before the spot that
+allows a firm grip is reached, and fish are well aware that natural
+objects such as twigs float down with the current. Anything, therefore,
+approaching from behind or rubbing upwards is suspicious. As this fish
+had just been startled, it would not do to let the wire touch him at
+all.
+
+After enlarging the loop I put the rod slowly forth again, worked the
+wire up stream, slipped the noose over his tail, and gently got it up
+to the balance of the fish. Waiting a moment to get the elbow over the
+end of the rod so as to have a good leverage, I gave a sudden jerk
+upwards, and felt the weight instantly. But the top of the rod struck
+the overhanging bough, and there was my fish, hung indeed, but still in
+the water near the surface. Nor could I throw it on the bank, because
+of the elder bushes. So I shortened the rod, pulling it in towards me
+quickly and dragging the jack through the water. The pliant wire had
+cut into the scales and skin—he might have been safely left suspended
+over the stream all day; but in the eagerness of the moment I was not
+satisfied till I had him up on the mound.
+
+We did not see much of Southlands, because the withy-beds were on the
+lowest ground; but there were six jacks strung on a twisted withy when
+we got back to the stunted oak and rested there tasting acid sorrel
+leaves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+EGG-TIME. A “GIP”-TRAP
+
+
+There is no sweeter time in the woods than just before the nesting
+begins in earnest. Is it the rising sap that causes a pleasant odour to
+emanate from every green thing? Idling along the hedgerows towards the
+woodlands there may perchance be seen small tufts of white rabbit’s fur
+in the grass, torn from herself by the doe to form a warm lining to the
+hole in which her litter will appear: a “sign” this that often guides a
+robber to her nest.
+
+Yonder on the rising ground, towering even in their fall over the low
+(lately cut) ash plantation, lie the giant limbs of the mighty oaks,
+thrown just as they felt the quickening heat. The bark has been
+stripped from the trunk and branches; the sun has turned the exposed
+surface to a deep buff colour, which contrasts with the fresh green of
+the underwood around and renders them visible afar.
+
+When the oak first puts forth its buds the woods take a ruddy tint.
+Gradually the background of green comes to the front, and the
+oak-apples swell, streaked with rosy stains, whence their semblance to
+the edible fruit of the orchard. All unconscious of the white or red
+cross daubed on the rough bark, the tree prepares its glory of leaf,
+though doomed the while by that sad mark to the axe.
+
+Cutting away the bushes with his billhook, the woodman next swings the
+cumbrous grub-axe, whose wide edge clears the earth from the larger
+roots. Then he puts his pipe in his pocket, and settles to the serious
+work of the “great axe,” as he calls it. I never could use this
+ungainly tool aright: a top-heavy, clumsy, awkward thing, it rules you
+instead of you ruling it. The handle, too, is flat—almost with an edge
+itself sometimes—and is quite beyond the grasp of any but hands of
+iron. Now the American axe feels balanced like a sword; this is because
+of the peculiar curve of the handle. To strike you stand with the left
+foot slightly forward, and the left hand uppermost: the “S” curve (it
+is of course not nearly so crooked as the letter) of the American axe
+adjusts itself to the anatomy of the attitude, so to speak.
+
+The straight English handle does not; it is stiff, and strains the
+muscles; but the common “great axe” has the advantage that it is also
+used for splitting logs and gnarled “butts.” An American axe is too
+beautiful a tool for that rude work. The American was designed to
+strike at the trunk of the tree several feet from the ground, the
+English axe is always directed to the great roots at the base.
+
+A dexterous woodman can swing his tool alternately left hand or right
+hand uppermost. The difference looks trifling; but try it, and you will
+be astonished at the difficulty. The blows echo and the chips fly, till
+the base of the tree, that naturally is much larger, is reduced to the
+size of the trunk or less. Now a pause, while one swarms up to “line”
+it—_i.e._ to attach a rope as high as possible to guide the “stick” in
+its fall.
+
+It is commonly said that in climbing it is best to look up—a maxim that
+has been used for moral illustrations; but it is a mistake. In
+ascending a tree you should never look higher than the brim of your
+hat, unless when quite still and resting on a branch; temporary
+blindness would be the penalty in this case. Particles of decayed bark,
+the borings of insects in dead wood, dust, and fragments of twigs, rush
+down in little streams and fill the eyes. The quantity of woody powder
+that adheres to a tree is surprising; every motion dislodges it from a
+thousand minute crevices. As for firs, in climbing a fir one cannot
+look up at all—dead sticks, needles, and dust pour down, and the
+branches are so thick together that the head has to be forced through
+them. The line fixed, the saw is applied, and by slow degrees the butt
+cut nearly through. Unless much overbalanced on one side by the limbs,
+an oak will stand on a still day when almost off.
+
+Some now seize the rope, and alternately pull and slacken, which gives
+the tree a tottering movement. One more daring than the rest drives a
+wedge into the saw-cut as it opens when the tree sways. It sways—it
+staggers; a loud crack as the fibres part, then with a slow heave over
+it goes, and, descending, twists upon the base. The vast limbs plough
+into the sward; the twigs are crushed; the boughs, after striking the
+earth, rebound and swish upwards. See that you stand clear, for the
+least branch will thresh you down. The flat surface of the exposed butt
+is blue with stains from the steel of the saw.
+
+Light taps with a small sharp axe, that cut the rind but no deeper,
+ring the trunk at intervals. Then the barking irons are inserted; they
+are rods of iron forged at the top something like a narrow shallow
+spoon. The bark from the trunk comes off in huge semi-cylinders almost
+large enough for a canoe. But that from the branches is best. You may
+mark how at the base the bark is two inches thick, lessening to a few
+lines on the topmost boughs. If it sticks a little, hammer it with the
+iron: it peels with a peculiar sound, and the juicy sap glistens white
+between. It is this that, drying in the sun, gives the barked tree its
+colour: in time the wood bleaches paler, and after a winter becomes
+grey. Inside, the bark is white streaked with brown; presently it will
+be all brown. While some strip it, others collect the pieces, and with
+them build toy-like sheds of bark, which is the manner of stacking it.
+
+From the peeled tree there rises a sweet odour of sap: the green mead,
+the green underwood and hawthorn around, are all lit up with the genial
+sunbeams. The beautiful wind-anemones are gone, too tender and lovely
+for so rude an earth; but the wild hyacinths droop their blue bells
+under the wood, and the cowslips rise in the grass. The nightingale
+sings without ceasing; the soft “coo-coo” of the dove sounds hard by;
+the merry cuckoo calls as he flies from elm to elm; the wood-pigeons
+rise and smite their wings together over the firs. In the mere below
+the coots are at play; they chase each other along the surface of the
+water and indulge in wild evolutions. Everything is happy. As the
+plough-boys stroll along they pluck the young succulent hawthorn leaves
+and nibble them.
+
+It is the sweetest time of all for wandering in the wood. The brambles
+have not yet grown so bushy as to check the passage; the thistles that
+in autumn will be as tall as the shoulder and thick as a walking-stick
+are as yet no bar; burrs do not attach themselves at every step, though
+the broad burdock leaves are spreading wide. In its full development
+the burdock is almost a shrub rather than a plant, with a woody stem an
+inch or more in diameter.
+
+Up in the fir trees the nests of the pigeons are sometimes so big that
+it appears as if they must use the same year after year, adding fresh
+twigs, else they could hardly attain such bulk. Those in the ash-poles
+are not nearly so large. In the open drives blue cartridge-cases lie
+among the grass, the brass part tarnished by the rain, thrown hurriedly
+aside from the smoking breech last autumn. But the guns are silent in
+the racks, though the keeper still carries his gun to shoot the vermin,
+which are extremely busy at this season. Vermin, however, do not quite
+agree among themselves: weasels and stoats are deadly enemies of mice
+and rats. Where rats are plentiful there they are sure to come; they
+will follow a rat into a dwelling-house.
+
+Here the green drive shows traces of the poaching it received from the
+thick-planted hoofs of the hunt when the leaves were off and the blast
+of the horn sounded fitfully as the gale carried the sound away. The
+vixen is now at peace, though perhaps it would scarcely be safe to
+wander too near the close-shaven mead where the keeper is occupied more
+and more every day with his pheasant-hatching. And far down on the
+lonely outlying farms, where even in fox-hunting England the music of
+the hounds is hardly heard in three years (because no great coverts
+cause the run to take that way), foul murder is sometimes done on
+Reynard or his family. A hedge-cutter marks the sleeping-place in the
+withies where the fox curls up by day; and with his rusty gun, that
+sometimes slaughters a roaming pheasant, sends the shot through the red
+side of the slumbering animal. Then, thrust ignobly into a sack, he
+shoulders the fox and marches round from door to door, tumbling the
+limp body rudely down on the pitching stones to prove that the fowls
+will now be safe, and to be rewarded with beer and small coin. A dead
+fox is profit to him for a fortnight. These evil deeds of course are
+cloaked as far as possible.
+
+Leaving now the wood for the lane that wanders through the meadows, a
+mower comes sidling up, and, looking mysteriously around with his hand
+behind under his coat, “You med have un for sixpence,” he says, and
+produces a partridge into whose body the point of the scythe ran as she
+sat on her nest in the grass, and whose struggles were ended by a blow
+from the rubber or whetstone flung at her head. He has got the eggs
+somewhere hidden under a swathe.
+
+The men that are so expert at finding partridges’ eggs to sell to the
+keepers know well beforehand whereabouts the birds are likely to lay.
+If a stranger who had made no previous observations went into the
+fields to find these eggs, with full permission to do so, he would
+probably wander in vain. The grass is long, and the nest has little to
+distinguish it from the ground; the old bird will sit so close that one
+may pass almost over her. Without a right of search in open daylight
+the difficulty is of course much greater. A man cannot quarter the
+fields when the crop is high and leave no trail.
+
+Farmers object to the trampling and damage of their property; and a
+keeper does not like to see a labourer loafing about, because he is not
+certain that the eggs when found will be conscientiously delivered to
+him. They may be taken elsewhere, or they may even be broken out of
+spite if the finder thinks he has a grudge to repay. Now that every
+field is enclosed, and for the most part well cultivated and looked
+after, the business of the egg-stealer is considerably diminished. He
+cannot roam over the country at his fancy; his egg-finding is nearly
+restricted to the locality of which he possesses minute knowledge.
+
+Thus workmen engaged in the towns, but sleeping several miles out in
+the villages, can keep a register of the slight indications they
+observe morning after morning as they cross the fields by the footpath
+to their labour. Early in the spring they notice that the partridges
+have paired: as time advances they see the pair day after day in the
+same meadow, and mark the spot. Those who work in the fields, again,
+have still better opportunities: the bird-keeping lads too have little
+else to do at that season than watch for nests. In the meadows the
+labourer as he walks to and fro with the “bush” passes over every inch
+of the ground. The “bush” is a mass of thorn bushes fixed in a frame
+and drawn by a horse; it acts like a light harrow, and leaves the
+meadow in strips like the pile of green velvet, stroked in narrow
+bands, one this way, one that, laying the grass blades in the
+directions it travels. Solitary work of this kind—for it requires but
+one man—is very favourable to observation. When the proper time arrives
+the searcher knows within a little where the nest must be, and has but
+a small space to beat.
+
+The pheasant being so large a bird, its motions are easy to watch; and
+the nest is speedily found, because, being in the hedge or under
+bushes, there is a definite place in which to look, instead of the
+broad surface of the field. Pheasants will get out of the preserves in
+the breeding season and wander into the mounds, so that the space the
+keeper has to range is then enlarged threefold. Both pheasants and
+partridges are frequently killed on their nests; when the eggs are hard
+the birds remain to the last moment, and are often knocked over.
+
+Besides poachers, the eggs have to run the chance of being destroyed by
+carrion crows, and occasionally by rooks. Rooks, though generally
+cleanly feeders, will at times eat almost anything, from a mussel to a
+fledgeling bird. Magpies and jays are accused of being equally
+dangerous enemies of eggs and young birds, and so too are snakes.
+Weasels, stoats, and rats spare neither egg, parents, nor offspring.
+Some of the dogs that run wild will devour eggs; and hawks pounce on
+the brood if they see an opportunity. Owls are said to do the same. The
+fitchew, the badger, and the hedgehog have a similarly evil reputation;
+but the first is rare, the second almost exterminated in many
+districts; the third—the poor hedgehog—is common, and some keepers have
+a bitter dislike to them. Swine are credited, with the same mischief as
+the worst of vermin at this particular season; but nowadays swine are
+not allowed to run wild in cultivated districts, except in the autumn
+when the acorns are falling.
+
+As the nests are on the ground they are peculiarly accessible, and the
+eggs, being large, are tempting. Perhaps the mowing machine is as
+destructive as anything; and after all these there is the risk of a wet
+season and of disease. Let the care exercised be never so great, a
+certain amount of mortality must occur.
+
+While the young partridges gradually become strong and swift, the nuts
+are increasing in size, and ripening upon the bough. The very hazel has
+a pleasant sound—not a nut-tree hedge existed in the neighbourhood that
+we did not know and visit. We noted the progress of the bushes from the
+earliest spring, and the catkins to the perfect nut.
+
+There are threads of brilliant scarlet upon the hazel in February,
+though the gloom of winter lingers and the “Shuck—a—sheck!” of the
+fieldfare fleeing before the snow sounds overhead. On the slender
+branches grow green ovals, from whose tips tiny scarlet plumes rise and
+curl over.
+
+It often happens that while the tall rods with speckled bark grow
+vigorously the stole is hollow and decaying when the hardy fern
+flourishes around it. Before the summer ricks are all carted the nuts
+are full of sweet milky matter, and the shell begins to harden. A hazel
+bough with a good crook is then sought by the men that are thinking of
+the wheat harvest: they trim it for a “vagging” stick, with which to
+pull the straw towards them. True reaping is now never seen: “vagging”
+makes the short stubble that forces the partridges into the turnips.
+Maple boughs, whose bark is so strongly ribbed, are also good for
+“vagging” sticks.
+
+Nut-tree is used for bonds to tie up faggots, and split for the
+shepherds’ hurdles. In winter sometimes a store of nuts and acorns may
+be seen fallen in a stream down the side of a bank, scratched out from
+a mouse’s hole, as they say, by Reynard, who devours the little
+provident creature without regard for its wisdom. So that man and wild
+animals derive pleasure or use from the hazel in many ways. When the
+nuts are ripe the carters’ lads do not care to ride sideways on the
+broad backs of the horses as they jog homewards along the lane, but are
+ever in the hedges.
+
+There were plenty in the double-mounds to which we had access; but the
+shepherd, who had learned his craft on the Downs, said that the nuts
+grew there in such immense quantities as determined us to see them.
+Sitting on the felled ash under the shade of the hawthorn hedge, where
+the butcher-birds every year used to stick the humble-bees on the
+thorns, he described the route—a mere waggon track—and the situation of
+the largest copses.
+
+The waggon track we found crossed the elevated plains close under and
+between the Downs, following at the foot, as it seemed, for an endless
+distance the curve of a range. The slope bounded the track on one side:
+on the other it was enclosed by a low bank covered with dead thorn
+thickly entangled, which enclosed the cornfields. The space between the
+hedge and the hill was as far as we could throw one of the bleached
+flints lying on the sward. It was dotted with hawthorn trees and furze,
+and full of dry brown grass. A few scattered firs, the remnants of
+extinct plantations, grew on the slope, and green “fairy rings” marked
+it here and there.
+
+These fairy rings have a somewhat different appearance from the dark
+green semicircles found in the meadows and called by the same name: the
+latter are often only segments of circles, are found near hedges, and
+almost always either under a tree or where a tree has been. There were
+more mushrooms on the side of the hill than we cared to carry. Some eat
+mushrooms raw—fresh as taken from the ground, with a little salt: to me
+the taste is then too strong. Of the many ways of cooking them the
+simplest is the best; that is, on a gridiron over wood embers on the
+hearth.
+
+Every few minutes a hare started out of the dry grass: he always
+scampered up the Down and stopped to look at us from the ridge. The
+hare runs faster up hill than down. By the cornfields there were wire
+nettings to stop them; but nothing is easier than for any passer-by who
+feels an interest in hares and rabbits, and does not like to see them
+jealously excluded, to open a gap. Hares were very numerous—temptingly
+so. Not far from where the track crossed a lonely road was a gipsy
+encampment; that swarthy people are ever about when anything is going
+on, and the reapers were busy in the corn. The dead dry thorns of the
+hedge answered very well to boil their pot with. Their tents, formed by
+thrusting the ends of long bent rods like half-hoops into the turf,
+looked dark like the canvas of a barge.
+
+These “gips”—country folk do not say gipsy—were unknown to us; but we
+were on terms with some members of a tribe who called at our house
+several times in the course of the year to buy willow. The men wore
+golden earrings, and bought “Black Sally,” a withy that has a dark
+bark, for pegs, and “bolts” of osier for basket-making. A bolt is a
+bundle of forty inches in circumference. Though the women tell
+fortunes, and mix the “dark man” and the “light man,” the “journey” and
+the “letter” to perfection, till the ladies half believe, I doubt if
+they know much of true palmistry. The magic of the past always had a
+charm for me. I had learned to know the lines, from that which winds
+along at the base of the thumb-ball and if clear means health and long
+life, to that which crosses close to the fingers and indicates the
+course of love, and had traced them on many a delicate palm. So that
+the “gips” could tell me nothing new.
+
+The women are the hardiest in the country; they simply ignore the
+weather. Even the hedgers and ditchers and the sturdiest labourers
+choose the lee side of the hedge when they pause to eat their
+luncheons; but the “gips” do not trouble to seek such shelter. Passing
+over the hills one winter’s day, when the Downs looked all alike, being
+covered with snow, I came across a “gip” family sitting on the ground
+in a lane, old and young exposed to the blast. In that there was
+nothing remarkable, but I recollect it because the young mother,
+handsome in the style of her race, had her neck and brown bust quite
+bare, and the white snowflakes drove thickly aslant upon her. Their
+complexion looks more dusky in winter, so that the contrast of the
+colours made me wish for an artist to paint it. And he might have put
+the grey embers of a fire gone out, and the twisted stem of a hawthorn
+bush with red haws above.
+
+A mile beyond the gipsy tents we entered among the copses: scattered
+ash plantations, and hazel thickets with narrow green tracks between.
+Further in, the nut-tree bushes were more numerous, and we became
+separated though within call. Presently a low whistle like the peewit’s
+(our signal) called me to Orion. On the border of a thicket, near an
+open field of swedes, he had found a hare in a wire. It was a
+beauty—the soft fur smooth to stroke, not so much as a shot-hole in the
+black-marked ears. Wired or netted hares and rabbits are much preferred
+by the dealers to those that have been shot—and so, too, netted
+partridges—because they look so clean and tempt the purchaser. The
+blacksmith Ikey, who bought our rabbits, used to sew up the shot wounds
+when they were much knocked about, and trimmed up the shattered ones in
+the cleverest way.
+
+To pull up the plug and take wire and hare too was the first impulse;
+yet we hesitated. Why did the man who set the snare let his game lie
+till that hour of the day? He should have visited it long before: it
+had a suspicious look altogether. It would also have been nearly
+impossible to carry the hare so many miles by daylight and past
+villages: even with the largest pockets it would have been doubtful,
+for the hare had stiffened as he lay stretched out. So, carefully
+replacing him just as we found him, we left the spot and re-entered the
+copse.
+
+The shepherd certainly was right; the quantity of nuts was immense: the
+best and largest bunches grew at the edge of the thickets, perhaps
+because they received more air and light than the bushes within that
+were surrounded by boughs. It thus happened that we were in the green
+pathway when some one suddenly spoke from behind, and, turning, there
+was a man in a velveteen jacket who had just stepped out of the bushes.
+The keeper was pleasant enough and readily allowed us to handle his
+gun—a very good weapon, though a little thin at the muzzle—for a man
+likes to see his gun admired. He said there were finer nuts in a valley
+he pointed out, and then carefully instructed us how to get back into
+the waggon track without returning by the same path. An old barn was
+the landmark; and, with a request from him not to break the bushes, he
+left us.
+
+Down in the wooded vale we paused. The whole thing was now clear: the
+hare in the wire was a trap laid for the “gips” whose camp was below.
+The keeper had been waiting about doubtless where he could command the
+various tracks up the hill, had seen us come that way, and did not wish
+us to return in the same direction; because if the “gip” saw any one at
+all he would not approach his snare. Whether the hare had actually been
+caught by the wire, or had been put in by the keeper, it was not easy
+to tell.
+
+We wandered on in the valley wood, going from bush to bush, little
+heeding whither we went. There are no woods so silent as the nut-tree;
+there is scarce a sound in them at that time except the occasional
+rustle of a rabbit, and the “thump, thump” they sometimes make
+underground in their buries after a sudden fright. So that the keen
+plaintive whistle of a kingfisher was almost startling. But we soon
+found the stream in the hollow. Broader than a brook and yet not quite
+a river, it flowed swift and clear, so that every flint at the bottom
+was visible. The nut-tree bushes came down to the edge: the ground was
+too firm for much rush or sedge; the streams that come out of the chalk
+are not so thickly fringed with vegetation as others.
+
+Some little way along there was a rounded sarsen boulder not far from
+shore, whose brown top was so nearly on a level with the surface that
+at one moment the water just covered it, and the next left it exposed.
+By it we spied a trout; but the hill above gave “Velvet” the command of
+the hollow; and it was too risky even to think of. After that the nuts
+were tame; there was nothing left but to turn homewards. As for
+trout-fishing, there is nothing so easy. Take the top joint off the
+rod, and put the wire on the second, which is stronger, fill the
+basket, and replace the fly. There were fellows who used to paddle in
+canoes up a certain river (not this little stream), pick out the
+largest trout, and shoot them with pistols, under pretence of
+practising at water-rats.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+WOODLAND TWILIGHT: TRAITORS ON THE GIBBET
+
+
+In a hedge that joined a wood, and about a hundred yards from it, there
+was a pleasant hiding-place beside a pollard ash. The bank was hollow
+with rabbit-buries: the summer heat had hardened the clay of the mound
+and caused it to crack and crumble wherever their excavations left a
+precipitous edge. Some way up the trunk of the tree an immense flat
+fungus projected, roughly resembling the protruding lip of a savage
+enlarged by the insertion of a piece of wood. It formed a black ledge
+standing out seven or eight inches, two or three inches thick, and
+extending for a foot or more round the bark. The pollard, indeed, was
+dead inside, and near the ground the black touch-wood showed. Ash
+timber must become rarer year by year: for, being so useful, it is
+constantly cut down, while few new saplings are planted or encouraged
+to become trees.
+
+In front a tangled mass of bramble arched over the dry ditch; it was
+possible to see some distance down the bank, for nothing grew on the
+top itself, the bushes all rising from either side—a peculiarity of
+clay mounds. This narrow space was a favourite promenade of the
+rabbits; they usually came out there for a few minutes first, looking
+about before venturing forth into the meadows. Except a little moss,
+scarcely any vegetation other than underwood clothed the bare hard soil
+of the mound; and for this reason every tiny aperture that suited their
+purpose was occupied by wasps.
+
+They much prefer a clear space about the entrance to their nests,
+affording an unencumbered passage: there were two nests within a few
+yards of the ash. Though so generally dreaded, wasps are really
+inoffensive insects, never attacking unless previously buffeted. You
+may sit close to a wasps’ nest for hours, and, if you keep still,
+receive no injury. Humble-bees, too, congregate in special localities:
+along one hedge half a dozen nests may be found, while other fields are
+searched for them in vain.
+
+The best time to enter such a hiding-place is a little before the sun
+sinks: for as his beams turn red all the creatures that rest during the
+day begin to stir. Then the hares start down from the uplands and
+appear on the short stubble, where the level rays throw exaggerated
+shadows behind them. When six or eight hares are thus seen near the
+centre of a single field, they and their shadows seem to take
+possession of and occupy it.
+
+Pheasants, though they retire to roost on the trees, often before
+rising come forth into the meadows adjacent to the coverts. The sward
+in front of the pollard ash sloped upwards gradually to the foot of a
+low hill planted with firs, and just outside these about half a dozen
+pheasants regularly appeared in the early evening. As the sun sank
+below the hill, and the shadow of the great beeches some distance away
+began to extend into the mead, they went back one by one into the firs.
+There they were nearly safe, for no trees give so much difficulty to
+the poacher. It is not easy even to shoot anything inside a fir
+plantation at night: as for the noose, it is almost impossible to use
+it. The lowest pheasant is taken first, and then the next above, like
+fowls perched on the rungs of a ladder; and, indeed, it is not unlikely
+that those who excel in this kind of work base their operations upon
+previous experiences in the hen roost.
+
+The wood pigeons begin to come home, and the wood is filled with their
+hollow notes: now here, now yonder, for as one ceases another takes it
+up. They cannot settle for some time: each as he arrives perches
+awhile, and then rises and tries a fresh place, so that there is a
+constant clattering. The green woodpecker approaches at a rapid
+pace—now opening, now closing his wings, and seeming to throw himself
+forward rather than to fly. He rushes at the trees in the hedge as
+though he could pierce the thick branches like a bullet. Other birds
+rise over or pass at the side: he goes through, arrow-like, avoiding
+the boughs. Instead of at once entering the wood, he stays awhile on
+the sward of the mead in the open.
+
+As the pheasants generally feed in a straight line along the ground, so
+the lesser pied woodpecker travels across the fields from tree to tree,
+rarely staying on more than one branch in each, but, after examining
+it, leaves all that may be on other boughs and seeks another ahead. He
+rises round and round the dead branch in the elm, tapping it with blows
+that succeed each other with marvellous rapidity. He taps for the
+purpose of sounding the wood to see if it be hollow or bored by grubs,
+and to startle the insects and make them run out for his convenience.
+He will ascend dead branches barely half an inch thick that vibrate as
+he springs from them, and proceeds down the hedge towards the wood. The
+“snop-top” sounds in every elm, and grows fainter as he recedes. The
+sound is often heard, but in the thick foliage of summer the bird
+escapes unseen, unless you are sitting almost under the tree when he
+arrives in it.
+
+Then the rooks come drifting slowly to the beeches: they are uncertain
+in their hour at this season—some, indeed, scarce care to return at
+all; and even when quite dusk and the faint stars of summer rather show
+themselves than shine, twos and threes come occasionally through the
+gloom. A pair of doves pass swiftly, flying for the lower wood, where
+the ashpoles grow. The grasshoppers sing in the grass, and will
+continue till the dew descends. As the little bats flutter swiftly to
+and fro just without the hedge, the faint sound of their wings is
+audible as they turn: their membranes are not so silent as feathers,
+and they agitate them with extreme velocity. Beetles go by with a loud
+hum, rising from those isolated bunches of grass that may be seen in
+every field; for the cows will not eat the rank green blades that grow
+over and hide dried dung.
+
+A large white spot, ill-defined and shapeless in the distance and the
+dimness, glides along the edge of the wood, then across in front before
+the fir plantation, next down the hedge to the left, and presently
+passes within two yards, going towards the wood again along this mound.
+It is a white owl: he flies about five feet from the ground and
+absolutely without a sound. So when you are walking at night it is
+quite startling to have one come overhead, approaching from behind and
+suddenly appearing. This owl is almost fearless; unless purposely
+alarmed he will scarcely notice you, and not at all if you are still.
+
+As he reaches the wood he leaves the hedge, having gone all round the
+field, and crosses to a small detached circular fir plantation in the
+centre. There he goes out of sight a minute or two; but presently
+appears skirting the low shed and rickyard yonder, and is finally lost
+behind the hedges. This round he will go every evening, and almost
+exactly at the same time—that is, in reference to the sun, which is the
+clock of nature.
+
+Step never so quietly out from the mound, the small birds that
+unnoticed have come to roost in the bushes will hear it and fly off in
+alarm. The rabbits that are near the hedge rush in; those that are far
+from home crouch in the furrows and the bunches. Crossing the open
+field, they suddenly start as it seems from under your feet—one white
+tail goes dapping up and down this way, another jerks over the “lands”
+that way. The moonbeams now glisten on the double-barrel; and a bright
+sparkle glitters here and there as a dewdrop catches a ray.
+
+Upon the grass a faint halo appears; it is a narrow band of light
+encircling the path, an oval ring—perhaps rather horseshoe shape than
+oval. It glides in front, keeping ever at the same distance as you
+walk, as if there the eye was focussed. This is only seen when the
+grass is wet with dew, and better in short grass than long. Where it
+shines the grass looks a paler green. Passing gently along a hedge
+thickly timbered with oak and elms, a hawk may perhaps start forth:
+hawks sometimes linger by the hedges till late, but it is not often
+that you can shoot one at roost except in spring. Then they invariably
+return to roost in the nest tree, and are watched there, and so shot, a
+gunner approaching on each side of the hedge. In the lane dark
+objects—rabbits—hasten away, and presently the footpath crosses the
+still motionless brook near where it flows into the mere.
+
+The low brick parapet of the bridge is overgrown with mosses; great
+hedges grow each side, and the willows, long uncut, almost meet in the
+centre. In one hedge an opening leads to a drinking-place for cattle:
+peering noiselessly over the parapet between the boughs, the coots and
+moorhens may be seen there feeding by the shore. They have come up from
+the mere as the ducks and teal do in the winter. The broader waters can
+scarcely be netted without a boat, but the brook here is the very place
+for a moonlight haul. The net is stretched first across the widest spot
+nearest to the pool, that no fish may escape. They swim up here in the
+daytime in shoals, perch especially; but the night poachers are often
+disappointed, for the fish seem to retire to deeper waters as the
+darkness comes on. A black mass of mud-coated sticks, rotten twigs, and
+thorn bushes, entangled in the meshes, is often the only result of much
+toil.
+
+Once now and then, as when a preserved pond is netted, a tremendous
+take occurs; but nets are rather gone by, being so unwieldy and
+requiring several men to manage effectually. If they are not hung out
+to dry properly after being used, they soon rot. Now, a large net
+stretched along railings or a hedge is rather a conspicuous object, and
+brings suspicion on the owner. It is also so heavy after use that until
+wrung, which takes time, a strong man can barely carry it; and if a
+sudden alarm comes it must be abandoned.
+
+It is pleasant to rest awhile on the parapet in the shadow of the
+bushes. The low thud-thud of sculls in the rowlocks of a distant punt
+travels up the water. By-and-by a hare comes along, enters on the
+bridge, and almost reaches the gate in the middle before he spies
+anything suspicious. Such a spot, and, indeed, any gateway, used to be
+a favourite place to set a net, and then drive the hares towards it
+with a cur dog that ran silent. Bold must be the man that would set a
+net in a footpath now, with almost every field preserved by owner or
+tenant. With a bound the hare hies back and across the meadow: the gun
+comes to the shoulder as swiftly.
+
+On the grass lit by the moon the hare looked quite distinct, but the
+moment the gaze is concentrated up the barrel he becomes a dim object
+with no defined outline. In shooting on the ground by twilight or in
+the moonbeams, waste no time in endeavouring to aim, but think of the
+hare’s ears—say a couple of feet in front of his tail—and the moment
+the gun feels steady pull the trigger. The flash and report come
+together; there is a dull indescribable sound ahead, as some of the
+shot strikes home in fur and some drills into the turf, and then a
+rustling in the grass. The moorhens dive, and the coots scuttle down
+the brook towards the mere at the flash. While yet the sulphurous smoke
+lingers, slow to disperse, over the cool dewy sward, there comes back
+an echo from the wood behind, then another from the mere, then another
+and another beyond.
+
+The distant sculls have ceased to work in the rowlocks—those in the
+punt are listening to the echoes; most likely they have been fishing
+for tench in the deep holes under the black shadow of the aspens.
+(Tench feed in the dark: if you wish to take a big one wait till it is
+necessary to fix a piece of white paper on the float.) Now put the
+empty cartridge in your pocket instead of throwing it aside; pull the
+hare’s neck across your knee, and hurry off. But you may safely stay to
+harle him; for those very echoes that have been heard a mile round
+about are the best safeguard: not one man in a thousand could tell the
+true direction whence the sound of the explosion originated.
+
+The pleasure of wandering in a wood was so great that it could never be
+resisted, and did not solely arise from the instinct of shooting. Many
+expeditions were made without a gun, or any implement of destruction,
+simply to enjoy the trees and thickets. There was one large wood very
+carefully preserved, and so situate in an open country as not to be
+easily entered. But a little observation showed that the keeper had a
+“habit.” He used to come out across the wheatfields to a small wayside
+“public,” and his route passed by a lonely barn and rickyard. One warm
+summer day I saw him come as usual to the “public,” and while he was
+there quietly slipped as far as the barn and hid in it.
+
+In July such a rickyard is very hot; heat radiates from every straw.
+The ground itself is dry and hard, each crevice choked with particles
+of white chaff; so that even the couch can hardly grow except close
+under the low hedge where the pink flower of the pimpernel opens to the
+sky. White stone staddles—short conical pillars with broad
+capitals—stand awaiting the load of sheaves that will shortly press on
+them. Every now and then a rustling in the heaps of straw indicates the
+presence of mice. From straw and stone and bare earth heat seems to
+rise up. The glare of the sunlight pours from above. The black pitched
+wooden walls of the barn and sheds prevent the circulation of air.
+There are no trees for shadow—nothing but a few elder bushes, which are
+crowded at intervals of a few minutes with sparrows rushing with a
+whirr of wings up from the standing corn.
+
+But the high pitched roof of the barn and of the lesser sheds has a
+beauty of its own—the minute vegetation that has covered the tiles
+having changed the original dull red to an orange hue. From ridge to
+eaves, from end to end, it is a wide expanse of colour, only varying so
+much in shade as to save it from monotony. It stands out glowing,
+distinct against the deep blue of the sky. The “cheep” of fledgeling
+sparrows comes from the crevices above; but swallows do not frequent
+solitary buildings so much as those by dwelling-houses, being
+especially fond of cattle-sheds where cows are milked.
+
+The proximity of animals apparently attracts them: perhaps in the more
+exposed places there may be dangers from birds of prey. As for the
+sparrows, they are innumerable. Some are marked with white patches—a
+few so much so as to make quite a show when they fly. One handsome cock
+bird has a white ring half round his neck, and his wings are a
+beautiful partridge-brown. He looks larger than the common sort; and
+there are several more here that likewise appear to exceed in size, and
+to have the same peculiar brown.
+
+After a while there came the sound of footsteps and a low but cheerful
+whistle. The keeper having slaked a thirst very natural on such a
+sultry day returned, and re-entered the wood. I had decided that it
+would be the best plan to follow in his rear, because then there would
+be little chance of crossing his course haphazard, and the dogs would
+not sniff any strange footsteps, since the footsteps would not be there
+till they had gone by. To hide from the eyes of a man is comparatively
+easy; but a dog will detect an unwonted presence in the thickest bush,
+and run in and set up a yelping, especially if it is a puppy.
+
+It was not more than forty yards from the barn to the wood: there was
+no mound or hedge, but a narrow, deep, and dry watercourse, a surface
+drain, ran across. Stooping a little and taking off my hat, I walked in
+this, so that the wheat each side rose above me and gave a perfect
+shelter. This precaution was necessary, because on the right there rose
+a steep Down, from whose summit the level wheat-fields could be easily
+surveyed. So near was it that I could distinguish the tracks of the
+hares worn in the short grass. But if you take off your hat no one can
+distinguish you in a wheat-field, more particularly if your hair is
+light: nor even in a hedge.
+
+Where the drain or furrow entered the wood was a wire-netting firmly
+fixed, and over it tall pitched palings, sharp at the top. The wood was
+enclosed with a thick hawthorn hedge that looked impassable; but the
+keeper’s footsteps, treading down the hedge-parsley and brushing aside
+the “gicks,” guided me behind a bush where was a very convenient gap.
+These signs and the smooth-worn bark of an ash against which it was
+needful to push proved that this quiet path was used somewhat
+frequently.
+
+Inside the wood the grass and the bluebell leaves—the bloom past and
+ripening to seed—so hung over the trail that it was difficult to
+follow. It wound about the ash stoles in the most circuitous manner—now
+to avoid the thistles, now a bramble thicket, or a hollow filled with
+nettles. Then the ash poles were clothed with the glory of the
+woodbine—one mass of white and yellow wax-like flowers to a height of
+eight or nine feet, and forming a curtain of bloom from branch to
+branch.
+
+After awhile I became aware that the trail was approaching the hill. At
+the foot it branched; and the question arose whether to follow the fork
+that zig-zagged up among the thickets or that which seemed to plunge
+into the recesses beneath. I had never been in this wood before—the
+time was selected because it was probable that the keeper would be
+extremely occupied with his pheasant chicks. Though the earth was so
+hard in the exposed rick-yard, here the clayey ground was still moist
+under the shadow of the leaves. Examining the path more closely, I
+easily distinguished the impression of the keeper’s boot: the iron
+toe-plate has left an almost perfect impression, and there were the
+deep grooves formed by the claws of his dog as it had scrambled up the
+declivity and the pad slipped on the clay.
+
+As he had taken the upward path, no doubt it led direct to the
+pheasants, which was sure to be on the hill itself, or a dry and
+healthy slope. I therefore took the other trail, since I must otherwise
+have overtaken him; for he would stay long among his chicks: just as an
+old-fashioned farmer lingers at a gate, gazing on his sheep. Advancing
+along the lower path, after some fifteen minutes it turned sharply to
+the right, and I stood under the precipitous cliff-like edge of the
+hill in a narrow coombe. The earth at the top hung over the verge, and
+beech-trees stood as it seemed in the act to topple, their exposed
+roots twisting to and fro before they re-entered the face of the
+precipice. Large masses of chalky rubble had actually fallen, and
+others were all but detached. The coombe, of course, could be
+overlooked from thence; but a moment’s reflection convinced me there
+was no risk, for who would dare to go near enough to the edge to look
+down?
+
+The coombe was full of fir-trees; and by them stood a long narrow
+shed—the roof ruinous, but the plank walls intact. It had originally
+been erected in a field, since planted for covers. This long shed, a
+greenish grey from age and mouldering wood, became a place of much
+interest. Along the back there were three rows of weasels and stoats
+nailed through the head or neck to the planks. There had been a hundred
+in each row—about three hundred altogether. The lapse of time had
+entirely dissipated the substance of many on the upper row; nothing
+remained but the grim and rusty nail. Further along there hung small
+strips without shape. Beyond these the nails supported something that
+had a rough outline still of the animal. In the second row the dried
+and shrivelled creatures were closely wrapped in nature’s mummy-cloth
+of green; in the third, some of those last exposed still retained a
+dull brown colour. None were recent. Above, under the eaves, the
+spiders’ webs had thickly gathered; beneath, the nettles flourished.
+
+But the end of the shed was the place where the more distinguished
+offenders were gibbeted. A footpath, well worn and evidently much used,
+went by this end, and, as I afterwards ascertained, communicated with
+the mansion above and the keeper’s cottage some distance below. Every
+passenger between must pass the gallows where the show of more noble
+traitors gave proof of the keeper’s loyal activity. Four shorter rows
+rose in tiers. To the nails at the top strong beaks and black feathers
+adhered, much bedraggled and ruffled by weather. These crows had long
+been dead; the keeper when he shot a crow did not trouble to have it
+carried home, unless a nail was conspicuously vacant. The ignoble bird
+was left where he fell.
+
+On the next row the black and white of magpies and the blue of jays
+alternated. Many of the magpies had been despoiled of their tails, and
+some of their wings, the feathers being saleable. The jays were more
+numerous, and untouched; they were slain in such numbers that the
+market for their plumage was glutted. Though the bodies were shrunken,
+the feathers were in fair condition. Magpies’ nests are so large that
+in winter, when the leaves are off the trees, they cannot but be seen,
+and, the spot being marked, in the summer old and young are easily
+destroyed. Hawks filled the third row. The kestrels were the most
+numerous, but there were many sparrow-hawks. These made a great show,
+and were stuck so closely that a feather could hardly be thrust between
+them. In the midst, quite smothered under their larger wings, were the
+remains of a smaller bird—probably a merlin. But the last and lowest
+row, that was also nearest, or on a level with the face of a person
+looking at the gallows, was the most striking.
+
+This grand tier was crowded with owls—not arranged in any order, but
+haphazard, causing a fine mixture of colour. Clearly this gallery was
+constantly renewed. The white owl gave the prevalent tint, side by side
+with the brown wood owls, and scattered among the rest, a few long
+horned owls—a mingling of white, yellowish brown, and tawny feathers.
+Though numerous here, yet trap and gun have so reduced the wood owls
+that you may listen half the night by a cover and never hear the
+“Who-hoo” that seems to demand your name.
+
+The barn owls are more liable to be shot, because they are more
+conspicuous; but, on the other hand, as they often breed and reside
+away from covers, they seem to escape. For months past one of these has
+sailed by my window every evening uttering a hissing “skir-r-r.” Here,
+some were nailed with their backs to the wall, that they might not hide
+their guilty faces.
+
+The delicate texture of the owl’s feathers is very remarkable: these
+birds remind me of a huge moth. The owls were more showy than the
+hawks, though it is commonly said that without sunlight there is no
+colour—as in the case of plants grown in darkness. Yet the hawks are
+day birds, while the owls fly by night. There came the sound of
+footsteps; and I retreated, casting one glance backward at the black
+and white, the blue and brown colours that streaked the wall, while the
+dull green weasels were in perpetual shadow. By night the bats would
+flit round and about that gloomy place. It would not do to return by
+the same path, lest another keeper might be coming up it; so I stepped
+into the wood itself. To those who walk only in the roads, hawks and
+owls seem almost rare. But a wood is a place to which they all flock;
+and any wanderer from the north or west naturally tends thither. This
+wood is of large extent; but even to the smaller plantations of the
+Downs it is wonderful what a number come in the course of a year.
+Besides the shed just visited, there would be certain to be another
+more or less ornamented near the keeper’s cottage, and probably others
+scattered about, where the commoner vermin could be nailed without the
+trouble of carrying them far away. Only the owls and hawks, magpies,
+and such more striking evidences of slaughter were collected here, and
+almost daily renewed.
+
+To get into the wood was much easier than to get out, on account of the
+thick hedge, palings, and high sharp-sparred gates; but I found a dry
+ditch where it was possible to creep under the bushes into a meadow
+where was a footpath.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+LURCHER-LAND: “THE PARK”
+
+
+The time of the apple-bloom is the most delicious season in Sarsen
+village. It is scarcely possible to obtain a view of the place,
+although it is built on the last slope of the Downs, because just where
+the ground drops and the eye expects an open space, plantations of fir
+and the tops of tall poplars and elms intercept the glance. In
+ascending from the level meadows of the vale thick double mounds,
+heavily timbered with elm, hide the houses until you are actually in
+their midst.
+
+Those only know a country who are acquainted with its footpaths. By the
+roads, indeed, the outside may be seen; but the footpaths go through
+the heart of the land. There are routes by which mile after mile may be
+travelled without leaving the sward. So you may pass from village to
+village; now crossing green meads, now cornfields, over brooks, past
+woods, through farmyard and rick “barken.” But such tracks are not
+mapped, and a stranger misses them altogether unless under the guidance
+of an old inhabitant.
+
+At Sarsen the dusty road enters the more modern part of the village at
+once, where the broad signs hang from the taverns at the cross-ways and
+where the loafers steadily gaze at the new comer. The Lower Path, after
+stile and hedge and elm, and grass that glows with golden buttercups,
+quietly leaves the side of the double mounds and goes straight through
+the orchards. There are fewer flowers under the trees, and the grass
+grows so long and rank that it has already fallen aslant of its own
+weight. It is choked, too, by masses of clog-weed, that springs up
+profusely over the site of old foundations; so that here ancient
+masonry may be hidden under the earth. Indeed, these orchards are a
+survival from the days when the monks laboured in vineyard and garden,
+and mayhap even of earlier times. When once a locality has got into the
+habit of growing a certain crop it continues to produce it for century
+after century; and thus there are villages famous for apple or pear or
+cherry, while the district at large is not at all given to such
+culture.
+
+The trunks of the trees succeed each other in endless ranks, like
+columns that support the most beautiful roof of pink and white. Here
+the bloom is rosy, there white prevails: the young green is hidden
+under the petals that are far more numerous than leaves, or even than
+leaves will be. Though the path really is in shadow as the branches
+shut out the sun, yet it seems brighter here than in the open, as if
+the place were illuminated by a million tiny lamps shedding the softest
+lustre. The light is reflected and apparently increased by the
+countless flowers overhead.
+
+The forest of bloom extends acre after acre, and only ceases where
+hedges divide, to commence again beyond the boundary. A wicket gate,
+all green with a film of vegetation over the decaying wood, opens under
+the very eaves of a cottage, and the path goes by the door—across a
+narrow meadow where deep and broad trenches, green now, show where
+ancient stews or fishponds existed, and then through a farmyard into a
+lane. Tall poplars rise on either hand, but there seem to be no houses;
+they stand, in fact, a field’s breadth back from the lane, and are
+approached by footpaths that every few yards necessitate a stile in the
+hedge.
+
+When a low thatched farmhouse does abut upon the way, the blank white
+wall of the rear part faces the road, and the front door opens on
+precisely the other side. Hard by is a row of beehives. Though the
+modern hives are at once more economical and humane, they have not the
+old associations that cling about the straw domes topped with broken
+earthenware to shoot off the heavy downfall of a thunderstorm.
+
+Everywhere the apple-bloom; the hum of bees; children sitting on the
+green beside the road, their laps full of flowers; the song of finches;
+and the low murmur of water that glides over flint and stone so
+shadowed by plants and grasses that the sunbeams cannot reach and
+glisten on it. Thus the straggling flower-strewn village stretches
+along beneath the hill and rises up the slope, and the swallows wheel
+and twitter over the gables where are their hereditary nesting-places.
+The lane ends on a broad dusty road, and, opposite, a quiet thatched
+house of the larger sort stands, endways to the street, with an open
+pitching before the windows. There, too, the swallows’ nests are
+crowded under the eaves, flowers are trained against the wall, and in
+the garden stand the same beautiful apple-trees. But within, the lower
+part of the windows—that have recess seats—are guarded by horizontal
+rods of iron, polished by the backs of many men. It is an inn, and the
+rods are to save the panes from the impact of an excited toper’s arm.
+
+The talk to-day, as the brown brandy, which the paler cognac has not
+yet superseded, is consumed, and the fumes of coarse tobacco and the
+smell of spilt beer and the faint sickly odour of evaporating spirits
+overpower the flowers, is of horses. The stable lads from the training
+stables far up on the Downs drop in or call at the door without
+dismounting. Once or twice in the day a tout calls and takes his
+“grub,” and scribbles a report in the little back parlour. Sporting
+papers, beer-stained and thumb-marked, lie on the tables; framed
+portraits of racers hang on the walls. Burly men, who certainly cannot
+ride a race, but who have horse in every feature, puff cigars and chat
+in jerky monosyllables that to an outsider are perfectly
+incomprehensible. But the glib way in which heavy sums of money are
+spoken of conveys the impression that they dabble in enormous wealth.
+
+There are dogs under the tables and chairs; dogs in the window-seat;
+dogs panting on the stone flags of the passage, after a sharp trot
+behind a trap, choosing the coolest spot to loll their red tongues out;
+dogs outside in the road; dogs standing on hind legs, and painfully
+lapping the water in the horse-trough; and there is a yapping of
+puppies in the distance. The cushions of the sofa are strewn with dogs’
+hairs, and once now and then a dog leisurely hops up the staircase.
+
+Customers are served by the landlady, a decent body enough in her way:
+her son, the man of the house, is up in the “orchut” at the rear,
+feeding his dogs. Where the “orchut” ends in a paddock stands a small
+shed: in places the thatch on the roof has fallen through in the course
+of years and revealed the bare rafters. The bottom part of the door has
+decayed, and the long nose of a greyhound is thrust out sniffing
+through a hole. Dickon, the said son, is delighted to undo the padlock
+for a visitor who is “square.” In an instant the long hounds leap up,
+half a dozen at a time, and I stagger backwards, forced by the sheer
+vigour of their caresses against the doorpost. Dickon cannot quell the
+uproarious pack: he kicks the door open, and away they scamper round
+and round the paddock at headlong speed.
+
+What a joy it is to them to stretch their limbs! I forget the squalor
+of the kennel in watching their happy gambols. I cannot drink more than
+one tumbler of brown brandy and water; but Dickon overlooks that
+weakness, feeling that I admire his greyhounds. It is arranged that I
+am to see them work in the autumn.
+
+The months pass, and in his trap with the famous trotter in the shafts
+we roll up the village street. Apple-bloom and golden fruit too are
+gone, and the houses show more now among the bare trees; but as the rim
+of the ruddy November sun comes forth from the edge of a cloud there
+appears a buff tint everywhere in the background. When elm and ash are
+bare the oaks retain their leaves, and these are illumined by the
+autumn beams. Over-topped by tall elms and hidden by the orchards, the
+oaks were hardly seen in summer; now they are found to be numerous and
+give the prevailing hue to the place.
+
+Dickon taps the dashboard as the mare at last tops the hill, and away
+she speeds along the level plateau for the Downs. Two greyhounds are
+with us; two more have gone on under charge of a boy. Skirting the
+hills a mile or two, we presently leave the road and drive over the
+turf: there is no track, but Dickon knows his way. The rendezvous is a
+small fir plantation, the young trees in which are but shoulder-high.
+Below is a plain entirely surrounded by the hills, and partly green
+with root crops: more than one flock of sheep is down there, and two
+teams ploughing the stubble. Neither the ploughmen nor the shepherds
+take the least heed of us, except to watch for the sport. The spare
+couple are fastened in the trap; the boy jumps up and takes the reins.
+Dickon puts the slip on the couple that are to run first, and we begin
+to range.
+
+Just at the foot of the hill the grass is tall and grey; there, too,
+are the dead dry stalks of many plants that cultivation has driven from
+the ploughed fields and that find a refuge at the edge. A hare starts
+from the very verge and makes up the Downs. Dickon slips the hounds,
+and a faint halloo comes from the shepherds and the ploughmen. It is a
+beautiful sight to see the hounds bound over the sward; the sinewy back
+bends like a bow, but a bow that, instead of an arrow, shoots itself;
+the deep chests drink the air. Is there any moment so joyful in life as
+the second when the chase begins? As we gaze, before we even step
+forward, the hare is over the ridge and out of sight. Then we race and
+tear up the slope; then the boy in the trap flaps the reins and away
+goes the mare out of sight too.
+
+Dickon is long and rawboned, a powerful fellow, strong of limb, and
+twice my build; but he sips too often at the brown brandy, and after
+the first burst I can head him. But he knows the hills and the route
+the hare will take, so that I have but to keep pace. In five minutes as
+we cross a ridge we see the game again; the hare is circling back—she
+passes under us not fifty yards away, as we stand panting on the hill.
+The youngest hound gains, and runs right over her; she doubles, the
+older hound picks up the running. By a furze-bush she doubles again;
+but the young one turns her—the next moment she is in the jaws of the
+old dog.
+
+Again and again the hounds are slipped, now one couple, now the other:
+we pant, and can scarcely speak with running, but the wild excitement
+of the hour and the sweet pure air of the Downs supply fresh strength.
+The little lad brings the mare anywhere: through the furze, among the
+flint-pits, jolting over the ruts, she rattles along with sure
+alacrity. There are five hares in the sack under the straw when at last
+we get up and slowly drive down to the highway, reaching it some two
+miles from where we left it. Dickon sends the dogs home by the boy on
+foot; we drive round and return to the village by a different route,
+entering it from the opposite direction.
+
+The reason of these things is that Sarsen has no great landlord. There
+are fifty small proprietors, and not a single resident magistrate.
+Besides the small farmers, there are scores of cottage owners, every
+one of whom is perfectly independent. Nobody cares for anybody. It is a
+republic, without even the semblance of a Government. It is liberty,
+equality, and swearing. As it is just within the limit of a borough,
+almost all the cottagers have votes, and are not to be trifled with.
+The proximity of horse-racing establishments adds to the general
+atmosphere of dissipation. Betting, card-playing, ferret-breeding and
+dog-fancying, poaching and politics, are the occupations of the
+populace. A little illicit badger-baiting is varied by a little
+vicar-baiting; the mass of the inhabitants are the reddest of Reds. Que
+voulez-vous?
+
+The edges of some large estates come up near, but the owners would
+hardly like to institute a persecution of these turbulent folk. If they
+did, where would be their influence at the next election? If a landlord
+makes himself unpopular, his own personal value depreciates. He is a
+nonentity in the committee-room, and his help rather deprecated by the
+party than desired. The Sarsen fellows are not such fools as to break
+pheasant preserves in the vale; as they are resident, that would not
+answer. They keep outside the _sanctum sanctorum_ of the pheasant
+coverts. But with ferret, dog, and gun, and now and then a partridge
+net along the edge of the standing barley, they excel. So, too, with
+the wire; and the broad open Downs are their happy hunting grounds,
+especially in misty weather.
+
+This is the village of the apple-bloom, the loveliest spot imaginable.
+After all, they are not such desperately bad fellows if you deduct
+their sins against the game laws. They are a jovial lot, and free with
+their money; they stand by one another—a great virtue in these
+cold-blooded days. If one gets in trouble with the law the rest
+subscribe the fine. They are full of knowledge of a certain sort, and
+you may learn anything, from the best way to hang a dog upwards.
+
+When we reach the inn, and Dickon calls for the brown brandy, there in
+the bar sits a gamekeeper, whose rubicund countenance beams with good
+humour. He is never called upon to pay his score. Good fellow! in
+addition he is popular, and every one asks him to drink: besides which,
+a tip for a race now and then makes this world wear a smiling aspect to
+him.
+
+Dickon’s “unconscious education”—absorbed rather than learnt in
+boyhood—had not been acquired under conditions likely to lead him to
+admire scenery. But, rough as he was, he was a good-natured fellow, and
+it was through him that I became acquainted with a very beautiful
+place.
+
+The footpath to The Park went for about half a mile under the shadow of
+elm trees, and in spring time there was a continual noise of young
+rooks in the nests above. Occasionally dead twigs, either dislodged
+from the nests or broken off by the motions of the old birds, came
+rustling down. One or two nests that had been blown out strewed the
+sward with half a bushel of dead sticks. After the rookery the path
+passed a lonely dairy, where the polished brazen vessels in the
+skilling glittered like gold in the sunshine. Farther on came wide open
+meadows with numerous oak-trees scattered in the midst—the outposts of
+the great wood at hand. The elms were flourishing and vigorous; but
+these detached oaks were decaying, and some dead, their hoar antiquity
+contrasting with the green grass and flowers of the mead.
+
+The mansion was hidden by elm and chestnut, pines and sombre cedars.
+From the edge of the lawn the steep slope of the Down rose, planted
+with all manner of shrubs, the walks through which were inches deep in
+dead leaves, needles, and fir-cones. Long neglect had permitted these
+to accumulate, and the yew hedges had almost grown together and covered
+the walk they bordered.
+
+The woods and preserves extended along the Downs, between the hills and
+the meadows beneath. There was one path through these woods that led
+into a narrow steep-sided coombe, one side of which was planted with
+firs. On the other was a little grass, but so thin as scarcely to cover
+the chalk. This side jutted out from the general line of the hills, and
+formed a bold bluff, whose white precipitous cliff was a landmark for
+many miles. In climbing the coombe, it was sometimes necessary to grasp
+the bunches of grass; for it would have been impossible to recover from
+a slip till, bruised and shaken, you rolled to the bottom, and perhaps
+into the little streamlet flowing through the hollow.
+
+The summit was of small extent, but the view beautiful. A low fence of
+withy had long since decayed, nothing but a few rotten stakes remaining
+at the very verge of the precipice. Steep as it was, there were some
+ledges that the rabbits frequented, making their homes in mid-air.
+Further along, the slope, a little less perpendicular, was covered with
+nut-tree bushes, where you could scramble down by holding to the
+boughs. There was a tradition of a fox-hunter, in the excitement of the
+chase, forcing his horse to descend through these bushes and actually
+reaching the level meadows below in safety.
+
+Impossible as it seemed, yet when the hounds were in full cry beneath
+it was easy to understand that in the eagerness of the moment a
+horseman at the top might feel tempted to join the stirring scene at
+any risk: for the fox frequently ran just below, making along the line
+of coverts; and from that narrow perch on the cliff the whole field
+came into sight at once. There was Reynard slipping ahead, and two or
+more fields behind the foremost of the pack, while the rest, rushing
+after, made the hills resound with their chiding. The leaders taking
+the hedges, the main squadron splashing through a marshy place, the
+outsiders straining to come up, and the last man behind, who rode
+harder than any—all could be seen at the same time.
+
+It was a lovely spot, too, for dreaming on a summer’s day, reclining on
+the turf, with the harebells swinging in the faint breeze. The extreme
+solitude was its charm: no lanes or tracks other than those purely
+pastoral came near. There were woods on either hand; in the fir
+plantations the jays chattered unceasingly. The broad landscape
+stretched out to the illimitable distance, till the power of the eye
+failed and could trace it no farther. But if the gaze was lifted it
+looked into blue space—the azure heaven not only overhead, but, as it
+seemed, all around.
+
+Dickon was always to and fro the mansion here, and took me with him.
+His object was ostensibly business: now it was a horse to buy, now a
+fat bullock or sheep; now it was an acre or two of wood that was to be
+cut. The people of the mansion were so much from home that their
+existence was almost forgotten, and they were spoken of vaguely as “on
+the Continent.” There was, in fact, a lack of ready-money, perhaps from
+the accumulation of settlements, that reduced the nominal income of the
+head to a tithe of what it should have been.
+
+Yet they were too proud to have in the modern builder, the modern
+upholsterer, and, most dreadful of all, the modern “gardener,” to put
+in French sashes, gilding and mirrors, and to root up the fine old yew
+hedges and level the grand old trees. Such is the usual preparation
+before an advertisement appears that a mansion of “historic
+association,” and “replete with every modern convenience,” is to let,
+with some thousand of acres of shooting, &c.
+
+They still kept up an establishment of servants—after a fashion—who did
+much as they pleased. Dickon was a great favourite. As for myself, a
+mere dreamy lad, I could go into the woods and wander as I liked, which
+was sufficient. But I recollect the immense kitchen very well, and the
+polished relics of the ancient turnspit machinery. There was a door
+from it opening on a square stone-flagged court with a vertical
+sun-dial on the wall; and beyond that ranges of disused
+coach-houses—all cloudy, as it were, with cobwebs hanging on
+old-fashioned post-chaises. Dickon was in love with one of the maids, a
+remarkably handsome girl.
+
+She showed me the famous mantelpiece, a vast carved work, under which
+you could stand upright. The legend was that once a year on a certain
+night a sable horse and cloaked horseman rode across that great
+apartment, flames snorting from the horse’s nostrils, and into the
+fireplace, disappearing with a clap of thunder. She brought me, too, an
+owl from the coach-houses, holding the bird by the legs firmly, her
+hand defended by her apron from the claws.
+
+The butler was a little merry fellow, extremely fond of a gun, and
+expert in using it. He seemed to have nothing to do but tell tales and
+sing, except at the rare intervals when some of the family returned
+unexpectedly. The keeper was always up there in the kitchen; he was as
+pleasant and jovial as a man could well be, though full of oaths on
+occasion. He was a man of one tale—of a somewhat enigmatical character.
+He would ask a stranger if they had ever heard of such-and-such a
+village where water set fire to a barn, ducks were drowned, and pigs
+cut their own throats, all in a single day.
+
+It seemed that some lime had been stored in the barn, when the brook
+rose and flooded the place; this slaked the lime and fired the straw,
+and so the barn. Something of the same kind happens occasionally on the
+river barges. The ducks were in a coop fastened down, so that they
+could not swim on the surface of the flood, which passed over and
+drowned them. The pigs were floated out of the sty, and in swimming
+their sharp-edged hoofs struck their fat jowls just behind the ear at
+every stroke till they cut into the artery, and so bled to death. Where
+he got this history from I do not know.
+
+One bright October morning (towards the end of the month) Dickon drove
+me over to the old place with his fast trotter—our double-barrels
+hidden under some sacks in the trap. The keeper was already waiting in
+the kitchen, sipping a glass of hot purl; the butler was filling every
+pocket with cartridges. After some comparison of their betting-books,
+for Dickon, on account of his acquaintance with the training
+establishments, was up to most moves, we started. The keeper had to
+send a certain number of pheasants and other game to the absent family
+and their friends every now and then, and this duty was his pretext.
+There was plenty of shooting to be got elsewhere, but the spice of
+naughtiness about this was alluring. To reach that part of the wood
+where it was proposed to shoot the shortest way led across some arable
+fields.
+
+Fieldfares and redwings rose out of the hedges and flew away in their
+peculiarly scattered manner—their flocks, though proceeding in the same
+direction, seeming all loose and disordered. Where the ploughs had been
+at work already the deep furrows were full of elm leaves, wafted as
+they fell from the trees in such quantities as to make the groove left
+by the share level with the ridges. A flock of lapwings were on the
+clods in an adjacent field, near enough to be seen, but far beyond
+gunshot. There might perhaps have been fifty birds, all facing one way
+and all perfectly motionless. They were, in fact, watching us intently,
+although not apparently looking towards us: they act so much in concert
+as to seem drilled. So soon as the possibility of danger had gone by
+each would begin to feed, moving ahead.
+
+The path then passed through the little meadows that joined the wood:
+and the sunlight glistened on the dew, or rather on the hoar frost that
+had melted and clung in heavy drops to the grass. Here one flashed
+emerald; there ruby; another a pure brilliance like a diamond. Under
+foot by the stiles the fallen acorns crunched as they split into halves
+beneath the sudden pressure.
+
+The leaves still left on the sycamores were marked with large black
+spots: the horse-chestnuts were quite bare; and already the tips of the
+branches carried the varnish-coloured sheaths of the buds that were to
+appear the following spring. These stuck to the finger if touched, as
+if they really had been varnished. Through the long months of winter
+they would remain, till under April showers and sunshine the sheath
+fell back and the green leaflets pushed up, the two forming together a
+rude cross for a short time.
+
+The day was perfectly still, and the colours of the leaves still left
+glowed in the sunbeams. Beneath, the dank bronzed fern that must soon
+shrivel was wet, and hung with spiders’ webs that like a slender
+netting upheld the dew. The keeper swore a good deal about a certain
+gentleman farmer whose lands adjoined the estate, but who held under a
+different proprietor. Between these two there was a constant
+bickering—the tenant angry about the damage done to his crops by the
+hares and rabbits, and the keeper bitterly resenting the tenant’s watch
+on his movements, and warnings to his employer that all was not quite
+as it should be.
+
+The tenant had the right to shoot, and he was always about in the
+turnips—a terrible thorn in the side of Dickon’s friend. The tenant
+roundly declared the keeper a rascal, and told his master so in written
+communications. The keeper declared the tenant set gins by the wood, in
+which the pheasants stepped and had their legs smashed. Then the tenant
+charged the keeper with trespassing; the other retorted that he decoyed
+the pheasants by leaving peas till they dropped out of the pods. In
+short, their hatred was always showing itself in some act of guerrilla
+warfare. As we approached the part of the woods fixed on, two of the
+keeper’s assistants, carrying thick sticks, stepped from behind a
+hedge, and reported that they had kept a good watch, and the old fox
+(the tenant) had not been seen that morning. So these fellows went
+round to beat, and the guns were got ready.
+
+Sometimes you could hear the pheasants running before they reached the
+low-cropped hawthorn hedge at the side of the plantation; sometimes
+they came so quietly as to appear suddenly out from the ditch, having
+crept through. Others came with a tremendous rush through the painted
+leaves, rising just before the hedge; and now and then one flew
+screaming high over the tops of the firs and ash-poles, his glossy neck
+glowing in the sunlight and his long tail floating behind. These last
+pleased me most, for when the shot struck the great bird going at that
+rate even death could not at once arrest his progress. The impetus
+carried him yards, gradually slanting downwards till he rolled in the
+green rush bunches.
+
+Then a hare slipped out and ran the gauntlet, and filled the hollow
+with his cries when the shot broke his hindquarters, till the dog had
+him. Jays came in couples, and green woodpeckers singly: the magpies
+cunningly flew aside instead of straight ahead; they never could do
+anything straightforward. A stoat peeped out, but went back directly
+when a rabbit whose retreat had been cut off bolted over his most
+insidious enemy. Every now and then Dickon’s shot when he fired high
+cut the twigs out of the ash by me. Then came the distant noise of the
+beaters’ sticks, and the pheasants, at last thoroughly disturbed, flew
+out in twos and threes at a time. Now the firing grew fierce, and the
+roll of the volleys ceaseless. It was impossible to jam the cartridges
+fast enough in the breech.
+
+A subtle flavour of sulphur filled the mouth, and the lips became dry.
+Sunshine and gleaming leaves and sky and grass seemed to all disappear
+in the fever of the moment. The gun burned the hands, all blackened by
+the powder; the metal got hotter and hotter; the sward was poached and
+trampled and dotted with cases; shot hissed through the air and
+pattered in showers on the opposite plantation; the eyes, bleared and
+bloodshot with the smoke, could scarce see to point the tube. Pheasants
+fell, and no one heeded; pheasants escaped, and none noticed it;
+pheasants were but just winged and ran wounded into the distant hedges;
+pheasants were blown out of all living shape and could hardly be
+gathered up. Not a word spoken: a breathless haste to load and blaze; a
+storm of shot and smoke and slaughter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+OBY AND HIS SYSTEM: THE MOUCHER’S CALENDAR
+
+
+One dark night, as I was walking on a lonely road, I kicked against
+something, and but just saved myself from a fall. It was an intoxicated
+man lying at full length. As a rule, it is best to let such people
+alone; but it occurred to me that the mail-cart was due; with two
+horses harnessed tandem-fashion, and travelling at full speed, the mail
+would probably go over him. So I seized the fellow by the collar and
+dragged him out of the way. Then he sat up, and asked in a very
+threatening tone who I was. I mentioned my name: he grunted, and fell
+back on the turf, where I left him.
+
+The incident passed out of my mind, when one afternoon a labourer
+called, asking for me in a mysterious manner, and refusing to
+communicate his business to any one else. When admitted, he produced a
+couple of cock pheasants from under his coat, the tail feathers much
+crumpled, but otherwise in fine condition. These he placed on the
+table, remarking, “I ain’t forgot as you drawed I out of the raud thuck
+night.” I made him understand that such presents were too embarrassing;
+but he seemed anxious to do “summat,” so I asked him to find me a few
+ferns and rare plants.
+
+This he did from time to time; and thus a species of acquaintanceship
+grew up, and I learned all about him. He was always called “Oby”
+(_i.e._ Obadiah), and was the most determined poacher of a neighbouring
+district—a notorious fighting man—hardened against shame, an Ishmaelite
+openly contemning authority and yet not insensible to kindness. I give
+his history in his own language—softening only the pronunciation, that
+would otherwise be unintelligible.
+
+“I lives with my granny in Thorney-lane: it be outside the village. My
+mother be married agen, you see, to the smith: her have got a cottage
+as belongs to her. My brother have got a van and travels the country;
+and sometimes I and my wife goes with him. I larned to set up a wire
+when I went to plough when I were a boy, but never took to it regular
+till I went a-navigating [navvying] and seed what a spree it were.
+
+“There ain’t no such chaps for poaching as they navigators in all
+England: I means where there be a railway a-making. I’ve knowed forty
+of ’em go out together on a Sunday, and every man had a dog, and some
+two; and good dogs too—lots of ’em as you wouldn’t buy for ten quid.
+They used to spread out like, and sweep the fields as clean as the
+crownd of your hat. Keepers weren’t no good at all, and besides they
+never knowed which place us was going to make for. One of the chaps
+gave I a puppy, and he growed into the finest greyhound as you’d find
+in a day’s walk. The first time I was took up before the bench I had to
+go to gaol, because the contractor had broke and the works was stopped,
+so that my mates hadn’t no money to pay the fine.
+
+“The dog was took away home to granny by my butty [comrade], but one of
+the gentlemen as seed it in the court sent his groom over and got it
+off the old woman for five pound. She thought if I hadn’t the hound I
+should give it up, and she come and paid me out of gaol. It was a
+wonder as I didn’t break her neck; only her was a good woman, you see,
+to I. But I wouldn’t have parted with that hound for a quart-full of
+sovereigns. Many’s a time I’ve seed his name—they changed his name, of
+course—in the papers for winning coursing matches. But we let that gent
+as bought him have it warm; we harried his pheasants and killed the
+most of ’em.
+
+“After that I came home, and took to it regular. It ain’t no use unless
+you do it regular. If a man goes out into the fields now and then
+chance-like he don’t get much, and is most sure to be caught—very
+likely in the place of somebody else the keepers were waiting for and
+as didn’t come. I goes to work every day the same as the rest, only I
+always take piece-work, which I can come to when I fancy, and stay as
+late in the evening as suits me with a good excuse. As I knows
+navigating, I do a main bit of draining and water-furrowing, and I gets
+good wages all the year round, and never wants for a job. You see, I
+knows more than the fellows as have never been at nothing but plough.
+
+“The reason I gets on so well poaching is because I’m always at work
+out in the fields, except when I goes with the van. I watches
+everything as goes on, and marks the hare’s tracks and the rabbit
+buries, and the double mounds and little copses as the pheasants
+wanders off to in the autumn. I keeps a nation good look-out after the
+keeper and his men, and sees their dodges—which way they walks, and how
+they comes back sudden and unexpected on purpose. There’s mostly one
+about with his eyes on me—when they sees me working on a farm they puts
+a man special to look after me. I never does nothing close round where
+I’m at work, so he waits about a main bit for nothing.
+
+“You see by going out piece-work I visits every farm in the parish. The
+other men they works for one farmer for two or three or maybe twenty
+years; but I goes very nigh all round the place—a fortnight here and a
+week there, and then a month somewhere else. So I knows every hare in
+the parish, and all his runs and all the double mounds and copses, and
+the little covers in the corners of the fields. When I be at work on
+one place I sets my wires about half a mile away on a farm as I ain’t
+been working on for a month, and where the keeper don’t keep no special
+look-out now I be gone. As I goes all round, I knows the ways of all
+the farmers, and them as bides out late at night at their friends’, and
+they as goes to bed early; and so I knows what paths to follow and what
+fields I can walk about in and never meet nobody.
+
+“The dodge is always to be in the fields and to know everybody’s ways.
+Then you may do just as you be a-mind. All of ’em knows I be
+a-poaching; but that don’t make no difference for work; I can use my
+tools, and do it as well as any man in the country, and they be glad to
+get me on for ’em. They farmers as have got their shooting be sharper
+than the keepers, and you can’t do much there; but they as haven’t got
+the shooting don’t take no notice. They sees my wires in the grass, and
+just looks the other way. If they sees I with a gun I puts un in ditch
+till they be gone by, and they don’t look among the nettles.
+
+“Some of them as got land by the wood would like I to be there all day
+and night. You see, their clover and corn feeds the hares and
+pheasants; and then some day when they goes into the market and passes
+the poultry-shop there be four or five score pheasants a-hanging up
+with their long tails a-sweeping in the faces of them as fed ’em. The
+same with the hares and the rabbits; and so they’d just as soon as I
+had ’em—and a dalled deal sooner—out of spite. Lord bless you! if I was
+to walk through their courtyards at night with a sack over my shoulders
+full of you knows what, and met one of ’em, he’d tell his dog to stop
+that yowling, and go in doors rather than see me. As for the rabbits,
+they hates they worse than poison. They knocks a hare over now and then
+themselves on the quiet—bless you! I could tell tales on a main few,
+but I bean’t such a fellow as that.
+
+“But, you see I don’t run no risk except from the keeper hisself, the
+men as helps un, and two or three lickspittles as be always messing
+round after a ferreting job or some wood-cutting, and the Christmas
+charities. It be enough to make a man sick to see they. This yer parish
+be a very big un, and a be preserved very high, and I can do three
+times as much in he as in the next un, as ain’t much preserved. So I
+sticks to this un.
+
+“Of course they tried to drive I out of un, and wanted the cottage; but
+granny had all the receipts for the quit-rent, and my lard and all the
+lawyers couldn’t shove us out, and there we means to bide. You have
+seed that row of oaks as grows in the hedge behind our house. One of
+’em leaned over the roof, and one of the limbs was like to fall; but
+they wouldn’t cut him, just to spite us, and the rain dripping spoilt
+the thatch. So I just had another chimney built at that end for an
+oven, and kept up the smoke till all the tree that side died. I’ve had
+more than one pheasant through them oaks, as draws ’em: I had one in a
+gin as I put in the ditch by my garden.
+
+“They started a tale as ’twas I as stole the lambs a year or two ago,
+and they had me up for it; but they couldn’t prove nothing agen me.
+Then they had me for unhinging the gates and drowning ’em in the water,
+but when they was going to try the case they two young farmers as you
+know of come and said as they did it when they was tight, and so I got
+off. They said as ’twas I that put the poison for the hounds when three
+on ’em took it and died while the hunt was on. It were the dalledest
+lie! I wouldn’t hurt a dog not for nothing. The keeper hisself put that
+poison, I knows, ’cause he couldn’t bear the pack coming to upset the
+pheasants. Yes, they been down upon I a main bit, but I means to bide.
+All the farmers knows as I never touched no lamb, nor even pulled a
+turmot, and they never couldn’t get no witnesses.
+
+“After a bit I catched the keeper hisself and the policeman at it; and
+there be another as knows it, and who do you think that be? It be the
+man in town as got the licence to sell game as haves most of my hares;
+the keeper selled he a lot as the money never got to my lard’s pocket
+and the steward never knowed of. Look at that now! So now he shuts his
+eye and axes me to drink, and give me the ferreting job in Longlands
+Mound; but, Lord bless ’ee, I bean’t so soft as he thinks for.
+
+“They used to try and get me to fight the keeper when they did catch me
+with a wire, but I knowed as hitting is transporting, and just put my
+hands in my pockets and let ’em do as they liked. _They_ knows I bean’t
+afraid of ’em in the road; I’ve threshed more than one of ’em, but I
+ain’t going to jump into _that_ trap. I’ve been before the bench, at
+one place and t’other, heaps of times, and paid the fine for trespass.
+Last time the chairman said to I, ‘So you be here again, Oby; we hear a
+good deal about you.’ I says, ‘Yes, my lard, I be here agen, but people
+never don’t hear nothing about _you_.’ That shut the old duffer up.
+Nobody never heard nothing of he, except at rent-audit.
+
+“However, they all knows me now—my lard and the steward, and the keeper
+and the bailies, and the farmers; and they don’t take half the notice
+of I as they used to. The keeper he don’t dare, nor the policeman as I
+telled you, and the rest be got used to me and my ways. And I does very
+well one week with t’other. One week I don’t take nothing, and the next
+I haves a good haul, chiefly hares and rabbits; ’cause of course I
+never goes into the wood, nor the plantations. It wants eight or ten
+with crape masks on for that job.
+
+“I sets up about four wires, sometimes only two; if you haves so many
+it is a job to look after ’em. I stops the hare’s other runs, so that
+she is sure to come along mine where I’ve got the turnpike up: the
+trick is to rub your hand along the runs as you want to stop, or spit
+on ’em, or summat like that; for a hare won’t pass nothing of that
+sort. So pussy goes back and comes by the run as I’ve chose: if she
+comes quick she don’t holler; if she comes slow she squeals a bit
+sometimes before the wire hangs her. Very often I bean’t fur off and
+stops the squealing. That’s why I can’t use a gin—it makes ’em holler
+so. I ferrets a goodish few rabbits on bright nights in winter.
+
+“As for the pheasants, I gets them mostly about acorn-time; they comes
+out of the plantations then. I keeps clear of the plantations, because,
+besides the men a-watching, they have got dogs chained up, and
+alarm-guns as goes off if you steps on the spring; and some have got a
+string stretched along as you be pretty sure to kick against, and then,
+bang! and all the dogs sets up a yowling. Of course it’s only powder,
+but it brings the keepers along. But when the acorns and the berries be
+ripe, the pheasants comes out along the hedges after ’em, and gets up
+at the haws and such like. They wanders for miles, and as they don’t
+care to go all the way back to roost they bides in the little copses as
+I told you of. They come to the same copses every year, which is
+curious, as most of them as will come this year will be shot before
+next.
+
+“If I can’t get ’em the fust night, I just throws a handful or two of
+peas about the place, and they’ll be sure to stay, and likely enough
+bring two or three more. I mostly shoots ’em with just a little puff of
+powder as you wouldn’t hear across one field, especially if it’s a
+windy night. I had a air-gun, as was took from me, but he weren’t much
+go: I likes a gun as throws the shot wide, but I never shoots any but
+roosters, unless I catch ’em standing still.
+
+“All as I can tell you is as the dodge is this: you watch everybody,
+and be always in the fields, and always work one parish till you knows
+every hare in un, and always work by yourself and don’t have no mates.”
+
+There were several other curious characters whom we frequently saw at
+work. The mouchers were about all the year round, and seemed to live
+in, or by the hedges, as much as the mice. These men probably see more
+than the most careful observer, without giving it a thought.
+
+In January the ice that freezes in the ditches appears of a dark
+colour, because it lies without intervening water on the dead brown
+leaves. Their tint shows through the translucent crystal, but near the
+edge of the ice three white lines or bands run round. If by any chance
+the ice gets broken or upturned, these white bands are seen to be
+caused by flanges projecting from the under surface, almost like
+stands. They are sometimes connected in such a way that the parallel
+flanges appear like the letter “h” with the two down-strokes much
+prolonged. In the morning the chalky rubble brought from the pits upon
+the Downs and used for mending gateways leading into the fields
+glistens brightly. Upon the surface of each piece of rubble there
+adheres a thin coating of ice: if this be lightly struck it falls off,
+and with it a flake of the chalk. As it melts, too, the chalk splits
+and crumbles; and thus in an ordinary gateway the same process may be
+seen that disintegrates the most majestic cliff.
+
+The stubbles—those that still remain—are full of linnets, upon which
+the mouching fowler preys in the late autumn. And when at the end of
+January the occasional sunbeams give some faint hope of spring, he
+wanders through the lanes carrying a decoy bird in a darkened cage, and
+a few boughs of privet studded with black berries and bound round with
+rushes for the convenience of handling.
+
+The female yellow-hammers, whose hues are not so brilliant as those of
+the male birds, seem as winter approaches to flock together, and roam
+the hedges and stubble fields in bevies. Where loads of corn have
+passed through gates the bushes often catch some straws, and the tops
+of the gateposts, being decayed and ragged, hold others. These are
+neglected while the seeds among the stubble, the charlock, and the
+autumn dandelion are plentiful and while the ears left by the gleaners
+may still be found. But in the shadowless winter days, hard and cold,
+each scattered straw is sought for.
+
+A few days before the new year [1879] opened I saw a yellow-hammer
+attacking, in a very ingenious manner, a straw that hung pendent, the
+ear downwards, from the post of a windy gateway. She fluttered up from
+the ground, clung to the ear, and outspread her wings, keeping them
+rigid. The draught acted on the wings, just as the breeze does on a
+paper kite, and there the bird remained supported without an effort
+while the ear was picked. Now and then the balance was lost, but she
+was soon up again, and again used the wind to maintain her position.
+The brilliant cockbirds return in the early spring, or at least appear
+to do so, for the habits of birds are sometimes quite local.
+
+It is probable that in severe and continued frost many hedgehogs die.
+On January 19 [1879], in the midst of the sharp weather, a hedgehog
+came to the door opening on the garden at night, and was taken in.
+Though carefully tended, the poor creature died next day: it was so
+weak it could scarcely roll itself into a ball. As the vital heat
+declined the fleas deserted their host and issued from among the
+spines. In February, unless it be a mild season, the mounds are still
+bare; and then under the bushes the ground may be sometimes seen strewn
+with bulbous roots, apparently of the blue-bell, lying thickly together
+and entirely exposed.
+
+The moucher now carries a bill-hook, and as he shambles along the road
+keeps a sharp look-out for briars. When he sees one the roots of which
+are not difficult to get at, and whose tall upright stem is green—if
+dark it is too old—he hacks it off with as much of the root as
+possible. The lesser branches are cut, and the stem generally trimmed;
+it is then sold to the gardeners as the stock on which to graft
+standard roses. In a few hours as he travels he will get together quite
+a bundle of such briars. He also collects moss, which is sold for the
+purpose of placing in flowerpots to hide the earth. The moss preferred
+is that growing on and round stoles.
+
+The melting of the snow and the rains in February cause the ditches to
+overflow and form shallow pools in the level meadows. Into these
+sometimes the rooks wade as far as the length of their legs allows
+them, till the discoloured yellow water almost touches the lower part
+of the breast. The moucher searches for small shell snails, of which
+quantities are sold as food for cage birds, and cuts small “turfs” a
+few inches square from the green by the roadside. These are in great
+request for larks, especially at this time of the year, when they begin
+to sing with all their might.
+
+Large flocks of woodpigeons are now in every field where the tender
+swede and turnip tops are sprouting green and succulent. These “tops”
+are the moucher’s first great crop of the year. The time that they
+appear varies with the weather: in a mild winter some may be found
+early in January; if the frost has been severe there may be none till
+March. These the moucher gathers by stealth; he speedily fills a sack,
+and goes off with it to the nearest town. Turnip tops are much more in
+demand now than formerly, and the stealing of them a more serious
+matter. This trade lasts some time, till the tops become too large and
+garden greens take their place.
+
+In going to and fro the fields the moucher searches the banks and digs
+out primrose “mars,” and ferns with the root attached, which he hawks
+from door to door in the town. He also gathers quantities of spring
+flowers, as violets. This spring [1879], owing to the severity of the
+season, there were practically none to gather, and when the weather
+moderated the garden flowers preceded those of the hedge. Till the 10th
+of March not a spot of colour was to be seen. About that time bright
+yellow flowers appeared suddenly on the clayey banks and waste places,
+and among the hard clay lumps of fields ploughed but not sown.
+
+The brilliant yellow formed a striking contrast to the dull brown of
+the clods, there being no green leaf to moderate the extremes of tint.
+These were the blossoms of the coltsfoot, that sends up a stalk
+surrounded with faintly rosy scales. Several such stalks often spring
+from a single clod: lift the heavy clod, and you have half a dozen
+flowers, a whole bunch, without a single leaf. Usually the young
+grasses and the seed-leaves of plants have risen up and supply a
+general green; but this year the coltsfoot bloomed unsupported,
+studding the dark ground with gold.
+
+Now the frogs are busy, and the land lizards come forth. Even these the
+moucher sometimes captures; for there is nothing so strange but that
+some one selects it for a pet. The mad March hares scamper about in
+broad daylight over the corn, whose pale green blades rise in straight
+lines a few inches above the soil. They are chasing their skittish
+loves, instead of soberly dreaming the day away in a bunch of grass.
+The ploughman walks in the furrow his share has made, and presently
+stops to measure the “lands” with the spud. His horses halt dead in the
+tenth of a second at the sound of his voice, glad to rest for a minute
+from their toil. Work there is in plenty now, for stone-picking,
+hoeing, and other matters must be attended to; but the moucher lounges
+in the road decoying chaffinches, or perhaps earns a shilling by
+driving some dealer’s cattle home from fair and market.
+
+By April his second great crop is ready—the watercress; the precise
+time of course varies very much, and at first the quantities are small.
+The hedges are now fast putting on the robe of green that gradually
+hides the wreck of last year’s growth. The withered head of the teazle,
+black from the rain, falls and disappears. Great burdock stems lie
+prostrate. Thick and hard as they are while the sap is still in them,
+in winter the wet ground rots the lower part till the blast overthrows
+the stalk. The hollow “gicks” too, that lately stood almost to the
+shoulder, is down, or slanting, temporarily supported by some branch.
+Just between the root and the stalk it has decayed till nothing but a
+narrow strip connects the dry upper part with the earth. The moucher
+sells the nests and eggs of small birds to townsfolk who cannot
+themselves wander among the fields, but who love to see something that
+reminds them of the green meadows.
+
+As the season advances and the summer comes he gathers vast quantities
+of dandelion leaves, parsley, sowthistle, clover, and so forth, as food
+for the tame rabbits kept in towns. If his haunt be not far from a
+river, he spends hours collecting bait—worm and grub and fly—for the
+boatmen, who sell them again to the anglers.
+
+Again there is work in the meadows—the haymaking is about, and the
+farmers are anxious for men. But the moucher passes by and looks for
+quaking grass, bunches of which have a ready sale. Fledgeling
+goldfinches and linnets, young rabbits, young squirrels, even the nest
+of the harvest-trow mouse, and occasionally a snake, bring him in a
+little money. He picks the forget-me-nots from the streams and the
+“blue-bottle” from the corn: bunches of the latter are sometimes sold
+in London at a price that seems extravagant to those who have seen
+whole fields tinted with its beautiful azure. By-and-by the golden
+wheat calls for an army of workers; but the moucher passes on and
+gathers groundsel.
+
+Then come the mushrooms: he knows the best places, and soon fills a
+basket full of “buttons” picking them very early in the morning. These
+are then put in “punnets” by the greengrocers and retailed at a high
+price. Later the blackberries ripen and form his third great crop; the
+quantity he brings in to the town is astonishing, and still there is
+always a customer. The blackberry harvest lasts for several weeks, as
+the berries do not all ripen at once, but successively, and is
+supplemented by elderberries and sloes. The moucher sometimes sleeps on
+the heaps of disused tan in a tanyard; tanyards are generally on the
+banks of small rivers. The tan is said to possess the property of
+preserving those who sleep on it from chills and cold, though they may
+lie quite exposed to the weather.
+
+There is generally at least one such a man as this about the outskirts
+of market towns, and he is an “original” best defined by negatives. He
+is not a tramp, for he never enters the casual wards and never
+begs—that is, of strangers; though there are certain farmhouses where
+he calls once now and then and gets a slice of bread and cheese and a
+pint of ale. He brings to the farmhouse a duck’s egg that has been
+dropped in the brook by some negligent bird, or carries intelligence of
+the nest made by some roaming goose in a distant withy-bed. Or once,
+perhaps, he found a sheep on its back in a narrow furrow, unable to get
+up and likely to die if not assisted, and by helping the animal to gain
+its legs earned a title to the owner’s gratitude.
+
+He is not a thief; apples and plums and so on are quite safe, though
+the turnip-tops are not: there is a subtle casuistry involved here—the
+distinction between the quasi-wild and the garden product. He is not a
+poacher in the sense of entering coverts, or even snaring a rabbit. If
+the pheasants are so numerous and so tame that passing carters have to
+whip them out of the way of the horses, it is hardly wonderful if one
+should disappear now and then. Nor is he like the Running Jack that
+used to accompany the more famous packs of fox-hounds, opening gates,
+holding horses, and a hundred other little services, and who kept up
+with the hunt by sheer fleetness of foot.
+
+Yet he is fleet of foot in his way, though never seen to run; he _pads_
+along on naked feet like an animal, never straightening the leg, but
+always keeping the knee a little bent. With a basket of watercress
+slung at his back by a piece of tar-cord, he travels rapidly in this
+way; his feet go “pad, pad” on the thick white dust, and he easily
+overtakes a good walker and keeps up the pace for miles without
+exertion. The watercress is a great staple, because it lasts for so
+many months. Seeing the nimble way in which he gathers it, thrusting
+aside the brook-lime, breaking off the coarser sprays, snipping away
+pieces of root, sorting and washing, and thinking of the amount of work
+to be got through before a shilling is earned, one would imagine that
+the slow, idling life of the labourer, with his regular wages, would be
+far more enticing.
+
+Near the stream the ground is perhaps peaty: little black pools appear
+between tufts of grass, some of them streaked with a reddish or
+yellowish slime that glistens on the surface of the dark water; and as
+you step there is a hissing sound as the spongy earth yields, and a
+tiny spout is forced forth several yards distant. Some of the drier
+part of the soil the moucher takes to sell for use in gardens and
+flower-pots as peat.
+
+The years roll on, and he grows old. But no feebleness of body or mind
+can induce him to enter the workhouse; he cannot quit his old haunts.
+Let it rain or sleet, or let the furious gale drive broken boughs
+across the road, he still sleeps in some shed or under a straw-rick. In
+sheer pity he is committed every now and then to prison for
+vagabondage—not for punishment, but in order to save him from himself.
+It is in vain: the moment he is out he returns to his habits. All he
+wants is a little beer—he is not a drunkard—and a little tobacco, and
+the hedges. Some chilly evening, as the shadows thicken, he shambles
+out of the town, and seeks the limekiln in the ploughed field, where,
+the substratum being limestone, the farmer burns it. Near the top of
+the kiln the ground is warm; there he reclines and sleeps.
+
+The night goes on. Out from the broken blocks of stone now and again
+there rises a lambent flame, to shine like a meteor for a moment and
+then disappear. The rain falls. The moucher moves uneasily in his
+sleep; instinctively he rolls or crawls towards the warmth, and
+presently lies extended on the top of the kiln. The wings of the
+water-fowl hurtle in the air as they go over; by-and-by the heron
+utters his loud call.
+
+Very early in the morning the quarryman comes to tend his fire, and
+starts to see on the now redhot and glowing stones, sunk below the rim,
+the presentment of a skeleton formed of the purest white ashes—a
+ghastly spectacle in the grey of the dawn, as the mist rises and the
+peewit plaintively whistles over the marshy meadow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+CHURCHYARD PHEASANTS: BEFORE THE BENCH
+
+
+The tower of the church at Essant Hill was so low that it scarcely
+seemed to rise above the maples in the hedges. It could not be seen
+until the last stile in the footpath across the meadows was passed.
+Church and tower then came into view together on the opposite side of a
+large open field. A few aged hawthorn trees dotted the sward, and
+beyond the church the outskirts of a wood were visible, but no
+dwellings could be seen. Upon a second and more careful glance,
+however, the chimney of a cottage appeared above a hedge, so covered
+with ivy as hardly to be separated from the green of the boughs.
+
+There were houses of course somewhere in Essant, but they were so
+scattered that a stranger might doubt the existence of the village. A
+few farmsteads long distances apart, and some cottages standing in
+green lanes and at the corners of the fields, were nearly all; there
+was nothing resembling a “street”—not so much as a row. The church was
+in effect the village, and the church was simply the mausoleum of the
+Dessant family, the owners of the place. Essant Hill as a name had been
+rather a problem to the archæologists, there being no hill: the ground
+was quite level. The explanation at last admitted was that Essant Hill
+was a corruption of D’Essantville.
+
+It seemed probable that the population had greatly diminished; because,
+although the church was of great antiquity, there was space still for
+interments in the yard. A yew tree of immense size stood in one corner,
+and was by tradition associated with the fortunes of the family. Though
+the old trunk was much decayed, yet there were still green and
+flourishing shoots; so that the superstitious elders said the luck of
+the house was returning.
+
+Within, the walls of the church were covered with marble slabs, and the
+space was reduced by the tombs of the Dessants, one with a recumbent
+figure; there were two brasses level with the pavement, and in the
+chancel hung the faded hatchments of the dead. For the pedigree went
+back to the Battle of Hastings, and there was scarce room for more
+heraldry. From week’s end to week’s end the silent nave and aisles
+remained empty; the chirp of the sparrows was the only sound to be
+heard there. There being no house attached to the living, the holder
+could not reside; so the old church slumbered in the midst of the
+meadows, the hedges, and woods, day after day, year after year.
+
+You could sit on the low churchyard wall in early summer under the
+shade of the elms in the hedge, whose bushes and briars came right
+over, and listen to the whistling of the blackbirds or the varied note
+of the thrush; you might see the whitethroat rise and sing just over
+the hedge, or look upwards and watch the swallows and swifts wheeling,
+wheeling, wheeling in the sky. No one would pass to disturb your
+meditations, whether simply dreaming of nothing in the genial summer
+warmth, or thinking over the course of history since the prows of the
+Norman ships grounded on the beach. If we suppose the time, instead of
+June, to be August or September, there would not even be the singing of
+the birds. But as you sat on the wall, by-and-by the pheasants, tame as
+chickens, would come up the hedge and over into the churchyard.
+
+Leaving the church to stroll by the footpath across the meadow towards
+the wood, at the first gateway half-a-dozen more pheasants scatter
+aside, just far enough to let you pass. In the short dusty lane more
+pheasants; and again at the edge of the cornfield. None of these show
+any signs of alarm, and only move just far enough to avoid being
+trodden on. Approaching the wood there are yet more pheasants,
+especially near the fir plantations that come up to the keeper’s
+cottage and form one side of the enclosure of his garden. The pheasants
+come up to the door to pick up what they can—not long since they were
+fed there—and then wander away between the slender fir trunks, and
+beyond them out into the fields.
+
+The path leads presently into a beautiful park, the only defect of
+which is that it is without undulation. It is quite level; but still
+the clumps of noble timber are pleasant to gaze upon. In one spot there
+still stands the grey wall and buttress of some ancient building,
+doubtless the relic of an ecclesiastical foundation. The present
+mansion is not far distant; it is of large size, but lacks elegance.
+Inside, nothing that modern skill can supply to render a residence
+comfortable, convenient, and (as art is understood in furniture)
+artistic has been neglected.
+
+Behind the fir plantations there is an extensive range of stabling,
+recently erected, with all the latest improvements. A telegraph wire
+connects the house with the stable, so that carriage or horse may be
+instantly summoned. Another wire has been carried to the nearest
+junction with the general telegraphic system; so that the resident in
+this retired spot may communicate his wishes without a moment’s delay
+to any part of the world.
+
+In the gardens and pleasure-grounds near the house all manner of
+ornamental shrubs are planted. There are conservatories, vineries,
+pineries; all the refinements of horticulture. The pheasants stray
+about the gravel walks and across the close-mown lawn where no daisy
+dares to lift its head. Yet, with all this precision of luxury, one
+thing is lacking—_the_ one thing, the keystone of English country
+life—_i.e._ a master whose heart is in the land.
+
+The estate is in process of “nursing” for a minor. The revenues had
+become practically sequestrated to a considerable extent in consequence
+of careless living when the minor nominally succeeded. It happened that
+the steward appointed was not only a lawyer of keen intelligence, but a
+conscientious man. He did his duty thoroughly. Every penny was got out
+of the estate that could be got, and every penny was saved.
+
+First, the rents were raised to the modern standard, many of them not
+having been increased for years. Then the tenants were in effect
+ordered to farm to the highest pitch, and to improve the soil itself by
+liberal investment. Buildings, drains, and so forth were provided for
+them; they only had to pay a small percentage upon the money expended
+in construction. In this there was nothing that could be complained of;
+but the hard, mechanical, unbending spirit in which it was done—the
+absence of all kind of sympathy—caused a certain amount of discontent.
+The steward next proceeded to turn the mansion, the park, home farm,
+and preserves into revenue.
+
+Everything was prepared to attract the wealthy man who wanted the
+temporary use of a good country house, first-class shooting and
+hunting. He succeeded in doing what few gentlemen have accomplished: he
+made the pheasants pay. One reason, of course, was that gentlemen have
+expenses outside and beyond breeding and keeping: the shooting party
+itself is expensive; whereas here the shooting party paid hard cash for
+their amusement. The steward had no knowledge of pheasants; but he had
+a wide experience of one side of human nature, and he understood
+accounts.
+
+The keepers were checked by figures at every turn, finding it
+impossible to elude the businesslike arrangements that were made. In
+revenue the result was highly successful. The mansion with the
+first-class shooting, hunting, and lovely woodlands—every modern
+convenience and comfort in the midst of the most rural scenery—let at a
+high price to good tenants. There was an income from what had
+previously been profitless. Under this shrewd management the estate was
+fast recovering.
+
+At the same time the whole parish groaned in spirit. The farmers
+grumbled at the moral pressure which forced them to progress in spite
+of themselves. They grumbled at the strange people who took up their
+residence in their midst and suddenly claimed all the loyalty which was
+the due of the old family. These people hunted over their fields,
+jumped over the hedges, glanced at them superciliously, and seemed
+astonished if every hat was not raised when they came in sight. The
+farmers felt that they were regarded as ignorant barbarians, and
+resented the town-bred insolence of people who aped the country
+gentleman.
+
+They grumbled about the over-preservation of game, and they grumbled
+about the rabbits. The hunt had its grumble too because some of the
+finest coverts were closed to the hounds, and because they wanted to
+know what became of the foxes that formerly lived in those coverts.
+Here was a beautiful place—a place that one might dream life away
+in—filled with all manner of discontent.
+
+Everything was done with the best intention. But the keystone was
+wanting—the landlord, the master, who had grown up in the traditions of
+the spot, and between whom and the people there would have been, even
+despite of grievances, a certain amount of sympathy. So true is it that
+in England, under the existing system of land tenure, an estate cannot
+be worked like the machinery of a factory.
+
+At first, when the pheasant-preserving began to reach such a height,
+there was a great deal of poaching by the resident labourers. The
+temptation was thrust so closely before their faces they could not
+resist it. When pheasants came wandering into the cottage gardens, and
+could even be enticed into the sheds and so secured by simply shutting
+the door, men who would not have gone out of their way to poach were
+led to commit themselves.
+
+There followed a succession of prosecutions and fines, till the place
+began to get a reputation for that sort of thing. It was at last
+intimated to the steward by certain gentlemen that this course of
+prosecution was extremely injudicious. For it is a fact—a fact
+carefully ignored sometimes—that resident gentlemen object to
+prosecutions, and, so far from being anxious to fine or imprison
+poachers, would very much rather not. The steward took the hint, and
+instead increased his watchers. But by this time the novelty of
+pheasants roaming about like fowls had begun to wear off, and their
+services were hardly needed. Men went by pheasants with as much
+indifference as they would pass a tame duck by the roadside.
+
+Such poachers as visited the woods came from a distance. Two determined
+raids were carried out by strangers, who escaped. Every now and then
+wires were found that had been abandoned, but the poaching ceased to be
+more than is usual on most properties. So far as the inhabitants of the
+parish were concerned it almost ceased altogether; but every now and
+then the strollers, gipsies, and similar characters carried off a
+pheasant or a hare, or half a dozen rabbits. These offenders when
+detected were usually charged before the Bench at a market town not
+many miles distant. Let us follow one there.
+
+The little town of L——, which has not even a branch railway, mainly
+consists of a long street. In one part this street widens out, so that
+the houses are some forty yards or more apart, and it then again
+contracts. This irregularly shaped opening is the market-place, and
+here in the centre stands a rude-looking building. It is supported upon
+thick short pillars, and was perhaps preceded by a wooden structure.
+Under these pillars there is usually a shabby chaise or two run in for
+cover, and the spot is the general rendezvous of all the dogs in the
+town.
+
+This morning there are a few loafers hanging round the place; and the
+tame town pigeons have fluttered down, and walk with nodding heads
+almost up to them. These pigeons always come to the edge of a group of
+people, mindful of the stray grain and peas that fall from the hands of
+farmers and dealers examining samples on market days. Presently, two
+constables come across carrying a heavy, clumsy box between them. They
+unlock a door, and take the box upstairs into the hall over the
+pillars. After them saunters a seedy man, evidently a clerk, with a
+rusty black bag; and after him again—for the magistrates’ Clerk’s clerk
+must have _his_ clerk—a boy with some leather-bound books.
+
+Some of the loafers touch their hats as a gentleman—a magistrate—rides
+up the street. But although the church clock is striking the hour fixed
+for the sessions to begin he does not come over to the hall upon
+dismounting in the inn-yard, but quietly strolls away to transact some
+business with the wine-merchant or the saddler. There really is not the
+least hurry. The Clerk stands in the inn porch calmly enjoying the
+September sunshine, and chatting with the landlord. Two or three more
+magistrates drive up; presently the chairman strolls over on foot from
+his house, which is almost in the town, to the inn, and joins in the
+pleasant gossip going on there, of course in a private apartment.
+
+Up in the justice-room the seedy Clerk’s clerk is leaning out of the
+window and conversing with a man below who has come along with a
+barrow-load of vegetables from his allotment. Some boys are spinning
+tops under the pillars. On the stone steps that lead up to the hall a
+young mother sits nursing her infant; she is waiting to “swear” the
+child. In the room itself several gipsy-looking men and women lounge in
+a corner. At one end is a broad table and some comfortable chairs
+behind it. In front of each chair, on the table, two sheets of clean
+foolscap have been placed on a sheet of blotting-paper. These and a
+variety of printed forms were taken from the clumsy box that is now
+open.
+
+At last there is a slight stir as a group is seen to emerge from the
+inn, and the magistrates take their seats. An elderly man who sits by
+the chair cocks his felt hat on the back of his head: the clerical
+magistrate very tenderly places his beaver in safety on the broad
+mantelpiece, that no irreverent sleeve may ruffle its gloss: several
+others who rarely do more than nod assent range themselves on the
+flanks; one younger man who looks as if he understood horses pulls out
+his toothpick. The chairman, stout and gouty, seizes a quill and
+sternly looks over the list of cases.
+
+Half a dozen summonses for non-payment of rates come first; then a
+dispute between a farmer and his man. After this the young mother
+“swears” her child; and, indeed, there is some very hard swearing here
+on both sides. A wrangle between two women—neighbours—who accuse each
+other of assault, and scream and chatter their loudest, comes next.
+Before they decide it, the Bench retire, and are absent a long time.
+
+By degrees a buzz arises, till the justice-room is as noisy as a
+market. Suddenly the door of the private room opens, and the Clerk
+comes out; instantly the buzz subsides, and in the silence those who
+are nearest catch something about the odds and the St. Leger, and an
+anything but magisterial roar of laughter. The chairman appears,
+rigidly compressing his features, and begins to deliver his sentence
+before he can sit down, but the solemn effect is much marred by the
+passing of a steam ploughing engine. The audience, too, tend away
+towards the windows to see whose engine it is.
+
+“Silence!” cries the Clerk, who has himself been looking out of window;
+the shuffling of feet ceases, and it is found that after this long
+consultation the Bench have dismissed both charges. The next case on
+the list is poaching; and at the call of his name one of the
+gipsy-looking men advances, and is ordered to stand before that part of
+the table which by consent represents the bar.
+
+“Oby Bottleton,” says the Clerk, half reading, half extemporizing, and
+shuffling his papers to conceal certain slips of technicality; “you are
+charged with trespassing in pursuit of game at Essant Hill—that you did
+use a wire on the estate—on land in the occupation of Johnson.”—“It’s a
+lie!” cries a good-looking, dark-complexioned woman, who has come up
+behind the defendant (the whilome navvy), and carries a child so
+wrapped in a shawl as to be invisible. “Silence! or you’ll have to go
+outside the court. Mr. Dalton Dessant will leave the Bench during the
+hearing of this case.” Mr. Dalton Dessant, one of the silent
+magistrates already alluded to, bows to the chairman, and wriggles his
+chair back about two feet from the table. There he gazes at the
+ceiling. He is one of the trustees of the Essant Hill property; and the
+Bench are very careful to consult public opinion in L—— borough.
+
+The first witness is an assistant keeper: the head keeper stands behind
+him—a fine man, still upright and hearty-looking, but evidently at the
+beginning of the vale of years; he holds his hat in his hand; the
+sunlight falls through the casement on his worn velveteen jacket. The
+assistant, with the aid of a few questions from the Clerk, gives his
+evidence very clear and fairly. “I saw the defendant’s van go down the
+lane,” he says:
+
+“It bean’t my van,” interrupts the defendant; “it’s my brother’s.”
+
+“You’ll have an opportunity of speaking presently,” says the Clerk. “Go
+on” (to the witness).
+
+“After the van went down the lane, it stopped by the highway-road, and
+the horse was taken out. The women left the van with baskets, and went
+towards the village.”
+
+“Yes, yes; come to the point. Did you hide yourself by order of the
+head keeper?”
+
+“I did—in the nutwood hedge by Three Corner Piece; after a bit I saw
+the defendant.”
+
+“Had you any reason for watching there?”
+
+“There was a wire and a rabbit in it.”
+
+“Well, what happened?”
+
+“I waited a long time, and presently the defendant got over the gate.
+He was very particular not to step on the soft mud by the gate—he kind
+of leaped over it, not to leave the mark of his boots. He had a lurcher
+with him, and I was afraid the dog would scent me in the hedge.”
+
+“You rascal!” (from the defendant’s wife).
+
+“But he didn’t, and, after looking carefully round, the defendant
+picked up the rabbit, and put it and the wire in his pocket.”
+
+“What did you do then?”
+
+“I got out of the hedge and came towards him. Directly he saw me he ran
+across the field; I whistled as loud as I could, and he” (jerking a
+thumb back towards the head keeper) “came out of the firs into the lane
+and stopped him. We found the wire and the rabbit in his pocket, and
+two more wires. I produce the wires.”
+
+This was the sum of the evidence; the head keeper simply confirmed the
+latter part of it. Oby replied that it was all false from beginning to
+end. He had not got corduroy trousers on that day, as stated. He was
+not there at all: he was in the village, and he could call witnesses to
+prove it. The Clerk reminded the audience that there was such a thing
+as imprisonment for perjury.
+
+Then the defendant turned savagely on the first witness, and admitted
+the truth of his statement by asking what he said when collared in the
+lane. “You said you had had a good lot lately, and didn’t care if you
+was nailed this time.”
+
+“Oh, what awful lies!” cried the wife. “It’s a wonder you don’t fall
+dead!”
+
+“You were not there,” the Clerk remarked quietly. “Now, Oby, what is
+your defence? Have you got any witnesses?”
+
+“No; I ain’t got no witnesses. All as I did, I know I walked up the
+hedge to look for mushrooms. I saw one of them things”—meaning the
+wires on the table—“and I just stooped down to see what it was, ’cos I
+didn’t know. I never seed one afore; and I was just going to pick it up
+and look at it” (the magistrates glance at each other, and cannot
+suppress a smile at this profound innocence), “when this fellow jumped
+out and frightened me. I never seed no rabbit.”
+
+“Why, you put the rabbit in your pocket,” interrupts the first witness.
+
+“Never mind,” said the Clerk to the witness; “let him go on.”
+
+“That’s all as I got to say,” continues the defendant. “I never seed no
+such things afore; and if he hadn’t come I should have put it down
+again.”
+
+“But you were trespassing,” said the Clerk.
+
+“I didn’t know it. There wasn’t no notice-board.”
+
+“Now, Oby,” cried the head keeper, “you know you’ve been along that
+lane this ten years.”
+
+“That will do” (from the chairman); “is there any more evidence?”
+
+As none was forthcoming, the Bench turned a little aside and spoke in
+low tones. The defendant’s wife immediately set up a sobbing, varied
+occasionally by a shriek; the infant woke up and cried, and two or
+three women of the same party behind began to talk in excited tones
+about “Shame.” The sentence was 2_l_. and costs—an announcement that
+caused a perfect storm of howling and crying.
+
+The defendant put his hands in his pockets with the complacent
+expression of a martyr. “I must go to gaol a’ spose; none of ourn ever
+went thur afore: a’ spose _I_ must go.” “Come,” said the Clerk, “why,
+you or your brother bought a piece of land and a cottage not long
+ago,”—then to the Bench, “They’re not real gipsies: he is a grandson of
+old Bottleton who had the tollgate; you recollect, Sir.”
+
+But the defendant declares he has no money; his friends shake their
+heads gloomily; and amid the shrieking of his wife and the crying of
+the child he is removed in the custody of two constables, to be
+presently conveyed to gaol. With ferocious glances at the Bench, as if
+they would like to tear the chairman’s eyes out, the women leave the
+court.
+
+“Next case,” calls the Clerk. The court sits about two hours longer,
+having taken some five hours to get through six cases. Just as the
+chairman rises the poacher’s wife returns to the table, without her
+child, angrily pulls out a dirty canvas bag, and throws down three or
+four sovereigns before the seedy Clerk’s clerk. The canvas bag is
+evidently half-full of money—the gleam of silver and gold is visible
+within it. The Bench stay to note this proceeding with an amused
+expression on their features. The woman looks at them as bold as brass,
+and stalks off with her man.
+
+Half an hour afterwards, two of the magistrates riding away from the
+town pass a small tavern on the outskirts. A travelling van is outside,
+and from the chimney on its roof thin smoke arises. There is a little
+group at the doorway, and among them stands the late prisoner. Oby
+holds a foaming tankard in one hand, and touches his battered hat, as
+the magistrates go by, with a gesture of sly humility.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+LUKE, THE RABBIT CONTRACTOR: THE BROOK-PATH
+
+
+The waggon-track leading to the Upper Woods almost always presented
+something of interest, and often of beauty. The solitude of the place
+seemed to have attracted flowers and ferns as well as wild animals and
+birds. For though flowers have no power of motion, yet seeds have a
+negative choice and lie dormant where they do not find a kindly
+welcome. But those carried hither by the birds or winds took root and
+flourished, secure from the rude ploughshare or the sharp scythe.
+
+The slow rumble of waggon-wheels seldom disturbed the dreamy silence,
+or interrupted the song of the birds; so seldom that large docks and
+thistles grew calmly beside the ruts untouched by hoofs. From the thick
+hedges on either side trailing brambles and briars stretched far out,
+and here and there was a fallen branch, broken off by the winds, whose
+leaves had turned brown and withered while all else was green. Round
+sarsen stones had been laid down in the marshy places to form a firm
+road, but the turf had long since covered most of them. Where the
+smooth brown surfaces did project mosses had lined the base, and rushes
+leaned over and hid the rest.
+
+In the ditches, under the shade of the brambles, the hart’s-tongue fern
+extended its long blade of dark glossy green. By the decaying stoles
+the hardy fern flourished, under the trees on the mounds the lady fern
+could be found, and farther up nearer the wood the tall brake almost
+supplanted the bushes. Oak and ash boughs reached across: in the ash
+the wood-pigeons lingered. Every now and then the bright colours of the
+green woodpeckers flashed to and fro their nest in a tree hard by. They
+would not have chosen it had not the place been nearly as quiet as the
+wood itself.
+
+Blackthorn bushes jealously encroached on the narrow stile that entered
+the lane from a meadow—a mere rail thrust across a gap. The gates, set
+in deep recesses—short lanes themselves cut through the mounds—were
+rotten and decayed, so as to scarcely hold together, and not to be
+moved without care. Hawthorn branches on each side pushed forward and
+lessened the opening; on the ground, where the gateposts had rotted
+nearly off, fungi came up in thick bunches.
+
+The little meadows to which they led were rich in oaks, growing on the
+“shore” of the ditches, tree after tree. The grass in them was not
+plentiful, but the flowers were many; in the spring the orchis sent up
+its beautiful purple, and in the heat of summer the bird’s-foot lotus
+flourished in the sunny places. Farther up, nearer the wood, the lane
+became hollow—worn down between high banks, at first clothed with fern,
+and then, as the hill got steeper, with fir trees.
+
+Where firs are tall and thick together the sunbeams that fall aslant
+between them seem to be made more visible than under other trees, by
+the motes or wood dust in the air. Still farther the banks became even
+steeper, till nothing but scanty ash stoles could grow upon them, the
+fir plantations skirting along the summit. Then suddenly, at a turn,
+the ground sank into a deep hollow, where in spring the eye rested with
+relief and pleasure on the tops of young firs, acre after acre, just
+freshly tinted with the most delicate green. From thence the track went
+into the wood.
+
+By day all through the summer months there was always something to be
+seen in the lane—a squirrel, a stoat; always a song-bird to listen to,
+a flower or fern to gather. By night the goatsucker visited it, and the
+bat, and the white owl gliding down the slope. In winter when the
+clouds hung low the darkness in the hollow between the high banks,
+where the light was shut out by the fir trees, was like that of a
+cavern. It was then that night after night a strange procession wended
+down it.
+
+First came an old man, walking stiffly—not so much from age as
+rheumatism—and helping his unsteady steps on the slippery sarsen stones
+with a stout ground-ash staff. Behind him followed a younger man, and
+in the rear a boy. Sometimes there was an extra assistant, making four;
+sometimes there was only the old man and one companion. Each had a long
+and strong ash stick across his shoulder, on which a load of rabbits
+was slung, an equal number in front and behind, to balance. The old
+fellow, who was dressed shabbily even for a labourer, was the
+contractor for the rabbits shot or ferreted in these woods.
+
+He took the whole number at a certain fixed price all round, and made
+what he could out of them. Every evening in the season he went to the
+woods to fetch those that had been captured during the day, conveying
+them to his cottage on the outskirts of the village. From thence they
+went by carrier’s cart to the railway. Old Luke’s books, such as they
+were, were quite beyond the understanding of any one but himself and
+his wife; nor could even they themselves tell you exactly how many
+dozen he purchased in the year. But in his cups the wicked old
+hypocrite had often been known to boast that he paid the lord of the
+manor as much money as the rent of a small farm.
+
+One of Luke’s eyes was closed with a kind of watery rheum, and was
+never opened except when he thought a rabbit was about to jump into a
+net. The other was but half open, and so overhung with a thick grey
+eyebrow as to be barely visible. His cheeks were the hue of clay, his
+chin scrubby, and a lanky black forelock depended over one temple. A
+battered felt hat, a ragged discoloured slop, and corduroys stained
+with the clay of the banks completed his squalid costume.
+
+A more miserable object or one apparently more deserving of pity it
+would be hard to imagine. To see him crawl with slow and feeble steps
+across the fields in winter, gradually working his way in the teeth of
+a driving rain, was enough to arouse compassion in the hardest heart:
+there was something so utterly woebegone in his whole aspect—so
+weather-beaten, as if he had been rained upon ever since childhood. He
+seemed humbled to the ground—crushed and spiritless.
+
+Now and then Luke was employed by some of the farmers to do their
+ferreting for them and to catch the rabbits in the banks by the
+roadside. More than once benevolent people driving by in their cosy
+cushioned carriages, and seeing this lonely wretch in the bitter wind
+watching a rabbit’s hole as if he were a dog well beaten and thrashed,
+had been known to stop and call the poor old fellow to the carriage
+door. Then Luke would lay his hand on his knee, shake his head, and
+sorrowfully state his pains and miseries: “Aw, I be ter-rable bad, I
+be,” he would say; “I be most terrable bad: I can’t but just drag my
+leg out of this yer ditch. It be a dull job, bless ’ee, this yer.” The
+tone, the look of the man, the dreary winter landscape all so
+thoroughly agreed together that a few small silver coins would drop
+into his hand, and Luke, with a deep groaning sigh of thankfulness,
+would bow and scrape and go back to his “dull job.”
+
+Luke, indeed, somehow or other was always in favour with the “quality.”
+He was as firmly fixed in his business as if he had been the most
+clever courtier. It was not of the least use for any one else to offer
+to take the rabbits, even if they would give more money. No, Luke was
+the trusty man; Luke, and nobody else, was worthy. So he grovelled on
+from year to year, blinking about the place. When some tenant found a
+gin in the turnip field, or a wire by the clover, and quietly waited
+till Luke came fumbling by and picked up the hare or rabbit, it did not
+make the slightest difference though he went straight to the keeper and
+made a formal statement.
+
+Luke had an answer always ready: he had not set the wire, but had
+stumbled on it unawares, and was going to take it to the keeper; or he
+had noticed a colony of rats about, and had put the gin for them. Now,
+the same excuse might have been made by any other poacher; the
+difference lay in this—that Luke was believed. At all events, such
+little trifles were forgotten, and Luke went on as before. He did a
+good deal of the ferreting in the hedges outside the woods himself: if
+he took home three dozen from the mound and only paid for two dozen,
+that scarcely concerned the world at large.
+
+If in coming down the dark and slippery lane at night somebody with a
+heavy sack stepped out from the shadow at the stile, and if the
+contents of the sack were rapidly transferred to the shoulder-sticks,
+or the bag itself bodily taken along—why, there was nobody there to
+see. As for the young man and the boy who helped, those discreet
+persons had always a rabbit for their own pot, or even for a friend;
+and indeed it was often remarked that old Luke could always get plenty
+of men to work for him. No one ever hinted at searching the dirty shed
+at the side of his cottage that was always locked by day, or looking
+inside the disused oven that it covered. But if fur or feathers had
+been found there, was not he the contractor? And clearly if a pheasant
+_was_ there he could not be held responsible for the unauthorised acts
+of his assistants.
+
+The truth was that Luke was the most thorough-paced poacher in the
+place—or, rather, he was a wholesale receiver. His success lay in
+making it pleasant for everybody all round. It was pleasant for the
+keeper, who could always dispose of a few hares or pheasants if he
+wanted a little money. The keeper, in ways known to himself, made it
+pleasant for the bailiff. It was equally pleasant for the
+under-keepers, who had what they wanted (in reason), and enjoyed a
+little by-play on their own account. It was pleasant for his men; and
+it was pleasant—specially pleasant—at a little wayside inn kept by
+Luke’s nephew, and, as was believed, with Luke’s money. Everybody
+concerned in the business could always procure refreshment there,
+including the policeman.
+
+There was only one class of persons whom Luke could not conciliate; and
+they were the tenants. These very inconsiderate folk argued that it was
+the keepers’ and Luke’s interest to maintain a very large stock of
+rabbits, which meant great inroads on their crops. There seemed to be
+even something like truth in their complaints; and once or twice the
+more independent carried their grievances to headquarters so
+effectually as to elicit an order for the destruction of the rabbits
+forthwith on their farms. But of what avail was such an order when the
+execution of it was entrusted to Luke himself?
+
+In time the tenants got to put up with Luke; and the wiser of them
+turned round and tried to make it still more pleasant for _him_: they
+spoke a good word for him; they gave him a quart of ale, and put little
+things in his way, such as a chance to buy and sell faggots at a small
+profit. Not to be ungrateful, Luke kept their rabbits within reasonable
+bounds; and he had this great recommendation—that whether they bullied
+him or whether they gave him ale and bread-and-cheese, Luke was always
+humble and always touched his hat.
+
+His wife kept a small shop for the sale of the coarser groceries and a
+little bacon. He had also rather extensive gardens, from which he sold
+quantities of vegetables. It was more than suspected that the carrier’s
+cart was really Luke’s—that is, he found the money for horsing it, and
+could take possession if he liked. The carrier’s cart took his rabbits,
+and the game he purchased of poachers, to the railway, and the
+vegetables from the gardens to the customers in town.
+
+At least one cottage besides his own belonged to him; and some would
+have it that this was one of the reasons of his success with the
+“quality.” The people at the great house, anxious to increase their
+influence, wished to buy every cottage and spare piece of land. This
+was well known, and many small owners prided themselves upon spiting
+the big people at the great house by refusing to sell, or selling to
+another person. The great house was believed to have secured the first
+“refuse” of Luke’s property, if ever he thought of selling. Luke, in
+fact, among the lower classes was looked upon as a capitalist—a miser
+with an unknown hoard. The old man used to sit of a winter’s evening,
+after he had brought down the rabbits, by the hearth, making
+rabbit-nets of twine. Almost everybody who came along the road, home
+from the market town, stopped, lifted the latch without knocking, and
+looked in to tell the news or hear it. But Luke’s favourite manoeuvre
+was to take out his snuff-box, tap it, and offer it to the person
+addressing him. This he would do to a farmer, even though it were the
+largest tenant of all. For this snuff-box was a present from the lady
+at the great house, who took an interest in poor old Luke’s
+infirmities, and gave him the snuff-box, a really good piece of
+workmanship, well filled with the finest snuff, to console his
+wretchedness.
+
+Of this box Luke was as proud as if it had been the insignia of the
+Legion of Honour, and never lost an opportunity of showing it to every
+one of standing. When the village heard of this kindly present it ran
+over in its mind all that it knew about the stile, and the sacks, and
+the disused oven. Then the village very quietly shrugged its shoulders,
+and though it knew not the word irony, well understood what that term
+conveys.
+
+At the foot of the hill on which the Upper Woods were situate there
+extended a level tract of meadows with some cornfields. Through these
+there flowed a large slow brook, often flooded in winter by the water
+rushing down from the higher lands. It was pleasant in the early year
+to walk now and then along the footpath that followed the brook, noting
+the gradual changes in the hedges.
+
+When the first swallow of the spring wheels over the watery places the
+dry sedges of last year still stand as they grew. They are supported by
+the bushes beside the meadow ditch where it widens to join the brook,
+and the water it brings down from the furrows scarcely moves through
+the belt of willow lining the larger stream. As the soft west wind runs
+along the hedge it draws a sigh from the dead dry stalks and leaves
+that will no more feel the rising sap.
+
+By the wet furrows the ground has still a brownish tint, for there the
+floods lingered and discoloured the grass. Near the ditch pointed flags
+are springing up, and the thick stems of the marsh marigold. From
+bunches of dark green leaves slender stalks arise and bear the golden
+petals of the marsh buttercups, the lesser celandine. If the wind blows
+cold and rainy they will close, and open again to the sunshine.
+
+At the outside of the withies, where the earth is drier, stand tall
+horse-chestnut trees, aspen, and beech. The leaflets of the
+horse-chestnut are already opening; but on the ground, half-hidden
+under beech leaves not yet decayed, and sycamore leaves reduced to
+imperfect grey skeletons, there lies a chestnut shell. It is sodden,
+and has lost its original green—the prickles, too, have decayed and
+disappeared; yet at a touch it falls apart, and discloses two
+chestnuts, still of a rich, deep polished brown.
+
+On the very bank of the brook there grows a beech whose bare boughs
+droop over, almost dipping in the water, where it comes with a swift
+rush from the narrow arches of a small bridge whose bricks are green
+with moss. The current is still slightly turbid, for the floods have
+not long subsided, and the soaked meadows and ploughed fields send
+their rills to swell the brook and stain it with sand and earth. On the
+surface float down twigs and small branches forced from the trees by
+the gales: sometimes an entangled mass of aquatic weeds—long, slender
+green filaments twisted and matted together—comes more slowly because
+heavy and deep in the water.
+
+A little bird comes flitting silently from the willows and perches on
+the drooping beech branch. It is a delicate little creature, the breast
+of a faint and dull yellowy green, the wings the lightest brown, and
+there is a pencilled streak over the eye. The beak is so slender it
+scarce seems capable of the work it should do, the legs and feet so
+tiny that they are barely visible. Hardly has he perched than the keen
+eyes detect a small black speck that has just issued from the arch,
+floating fast on the surface of the stream and borne round and round in
+a tiny whirlpool.
+
+He darts from the branch, hovers just above the water, and in a second
+has seized the black speck and returned to the branch. A moment or two
+passes, and again he darts and takes something—this time invisible—from
+the water. A third time he hovers, and on this occasion just brushes
+the surface. Then, suddenly finding that these movements are watched,
+he flits—all too soon—up high into the beech and away into the narrow
+copse. The general tint and shape of the bird are those of the willow
+wren, but it is difficult to identify the species in so brief a glance
+and without hearing its note.
+
+The path now trends somewhat away from the stream and skirts a ploughed
+field, where the hedges are cropped close and the elms stripped of the
+lesser boughs about the trunks, that the sparrows may not find shelter.
+But all the same there are birds here too—one in the thick low hedge,
+two or three farther on, another in the ditch perching on the dead
+white stems of last year’s plants that can hardly support an ounce
+weight, and all calling to each other. It is six marsh tits, as busy as
+they can well be.
+
+One rises from the ditch to the trunk of an elm where the thick bark is
+green with lichen: he goes up the tree like a woodpecker, and peers
+into every crevice. His little beak strikes, peck, peck, at a place
+where something is hidden: then he proceeds farther up the trunk: next
+he descends a few steps in a sidelong way, and finally hops down some
+three inches head foremost, and alights again on the all but
+perpendicular bark. But his tail does not touch the tree, and in
+another minute down he flies again to the ditch.
+
+A shrill and yet low note that sounds something like “skeek-skeek”
+comes from a birch, and another “skeek-skeek” answers from an elm. It
+is like the friction of iron against iron without oil on the bearings.
+This is the tree-climber calling to his mate. He creeps over the boles
+of the birch, and where the larger limbs join the trunk, trailing his
+tail along the bark, and clinging so closely that but for the sharp
+note he would be passed. Even when that has called attention, the
+colour of his back so little differs from the colour of bark that if he
+is some height up the tree it is not easy to detect him.
+
+The days go on and the hedges become green—the sun shines, and the
+blackbirds whistle in the trees. They leave the hedge, and mount into
+the elm or ash to deliver their song; then, after a pause, dive down
+again to the bushes. Up from the pale green corn that is yet but a few
+inches high rises a little brown bird, mounting till he has attained to
+the elevation of the adjacent oak. Then, beginning his song, he extends
+his wings, lifts his tail, and gradually descends slanting
+forward—slowly, like a parachute—sing, sing, singing all the while till
+the little legs, that can be seen against the sky somewhat depending,
+touch the earth and the wheat hides him. Still from the clod comes the
+finishing bar of his music.
+
+In a short time up he rises again, and this time from the summit of his
+flight sinks in a similar manner singing to a branch of the oak. There
+he sings again; and, again rising, comes back almost to the same bough
+singing as he descends. But he is not alone: from an elm hard by come
+the same notes, and from yet another tree they are also repeated. They
+cannot rest—now one flits from the topmost bough of an elm to another
+topmost bough; now a second comes up from feeding, and cries from the
+branches. They are tree-pipits; and though the call is monotonous, yet
+it is so cheerful and pleasing that one cannot choose but stay and
+listen.
+
+Suddenly, two that have been vigorously calling start forward together
+and meet in mid-air. They buffet each other with their wings; their
+little beaks fiercely strike; their necks are extended; they manoeuvre
+round each other, trying for an advantage. They descend, heedless in
+the rage of their tiny hearts, within a few yards of the watcher, and
+then in alarm separate. But one flies to the oak branch and defiantly
+calls immediately.
+
+Over the meadows comes the distant note of the cuckoo. When he first
+calls his voice is short and somewhat rough, but in a few days it gains
+power. Then the second syllable has a mellow ring: and as he cries from
+the tree, the note, swiftly repeated and echoed by the wood, dwells on
+the ear something like the “hum” or vibration of a beautiful bell.
+
+As the hedges become green the ivy leaves turn brown at the edge and
+fall; the wild ivy is often curiously variegated. At the foot of the
+tree up which it climbs the leaves are five-angled, higher up they lose
+the angles and become rounded, though growing on the same plant.
+Sometimes they have a grey tint, especially those that trail along the
+bank; sometimes the leaves are a reddish brown with pale green ribs.
+
+By the brook now the meadow has become of a rich bright green, the
+stream has sunk and is clear, and the sunlight dances on the ripples.
+The grasses at the edge—the turf—curl over and begin to grow down the
+steep side that a little while since was washed by the current. Where
+there is a ledge of mud and sand the yellow wagtail runs; he stands on
+a stone and jerks his tail.
+
+The ploughed field that comes down almost to the brook—a mere strip of
+meadow between—is green too with rising wheat, high enough now to hide
+the partridges. Before it got so tall it was pleasant to watch the pair
+that frequent it; they were so confident that they did not even trouble
+to cower. At any other time of year they would have run, or flown; but
+then, though scarcely forty yards away and perfectly visible, they
+simply ceased feeding but showed no further alarm.
+
+Upon the plough birds in general should look as their best friend, for
+it provides them with the staff of life as much as it does man. The
+earth turned up under the share yields them grubs and insects and
+worms: the seed is sown and the clods harrowed, and they take a second
+toll; the weeds are hoed or pulled up, and at their roots there are
+more insects; from the stalk and ears and the bloom of the rising corn
+they seize caterpillars; when it is ripe they enjoy the grain; when it
+is cut and carried there are ears in the stubble, and they can then
+feast on the seeds of the innumerable plants that flowered among it;
+finally comes the plough again. It is as if the men and horses worked
+for the birds.
+
+The horse-chestnut trees in the narrow copse bloom; the bees are
+humming everywhere and summer is at hand. Presently the brown
+cockchafers will come almost like an army of locusts, as suddenly
+appearing without a sign. They seem to be particularly numerous where
+there is much maple in the hedges.
+
+Resting now on the sward by the stream—contracted in seeming by the
+weeds and flags and fresh sedges—there comes the distant murmur of
+voices and the musical laugh of girls. The ear tries to distinguish the
+words and gather the meaning; but the syllables are intertangled—it is
+like listening to a low sweet song in a language all unknown. This is
+the water falling gently over the mossy hatch and splashing faintly on
+the stones beneath; the blue dragon-flies dart over the smooth surface
+or alight on a broad leaf—these blue dragon-flies when thus resting
+curl the tail upwards.
+
+Farther up above the mere there is a spot where the pool itself ends,
+or rather imperceptibly disappears among a vast mass of aquatic weeds.
+To these on the soft oozy mud succeed acres of sedge and rush and great
+turfs of greyish grass. Low willows are scattered about, and alder at
+the edge and where the ground is firmer. This is the home of the
+dragon-flies, of the coots, whose white bald foreheads distinguish them
+at a distance, and of the moorhens.
+
+A narrow lane crosses it on a low bank or causeway but just raised
+above the level of the floods. It is bordered on either side by thick
+hawthorn hedges, and these again are further rendered more impassable
+by the rankest growth of hemlocks, “gicks,” nettles, hedge-parsley, and
+similar coarse plants. In these the nettle-creeper (white-throat) hides
+her nest, and they have so encroached that the footpath is almost
+threatened. This lane leads from the Upper Woods across the marshy
+level to the cornfields, being a branch from that down which Luke the
+contractor carried his rabbits.
+
+Now a hare coming from the uplands beyond the woods, or from the woods,
+and desirous of visiting the cornfields of the level grounds below,
+found it difficult to pass the water. For besides the marsh itself, the
+mere, and the brook, another slow, stagnant stream, quite choked with
+sedges and flags, uncut for years, ran into it, or rather joined it,
+and before doing so meandered along the very foot of the hill-side over
+which the woods grew. To a hare or a rabbit, therefore, there was but
+one path or exit without taking to the water in this direction for
+nearly a mile, and that was across this narrow raised causeway. The
+pheasants frequently used it, as if preferring to walk than to fly.
+Partridges came too, to seat themselves in the dry dust—a thing they do
+daily in warm weather.
+
+Hares were constantly passing from the cornfields to the wood, and the
+wood to the cornfields; and they had another reason for using this
+track, because so many herbs and plants, whose leaves they like better
+than grass, flourished at the sides of the hedges. No scythe cuts them
+down, as it does by the hedges in the meadows; nor was a man sent round
+with a reaping hook to chop them off, as is often done round the arable
+fields. There was, therefore, always a feast here, to which, also, the
+rabbits came.
+
+The poachers were perfectly well aware of all this, and as a
+consequence this narrow lane became a most favourite haunt of theirs. A
+wire set in the runs that led to the causeway, or in the causeway
+itself, was almost certain to be thrown. At one time it was
+occasionally netted; and now and then a bolder fellow hid himself in
+the bushes with a gun, and took his choice of pheasant, partridge,
+hare, or rabbit. These practices were possible, because although so
+secluded, there was a public right-of-way along the lane.
+
+But of recent years, as game became more valued and the keepers were
+increased, a check was put upon it, though even now wires are
+frequently found which poachers have been obliged to abandon. They are
+loth to give up a place that has a kind of poaching reputation. As if
+in revenge for the interference, they have so ransacked the marsh every
+spring for the eggs of the waterfowl that the wild duck will not lay
+there, but seek spots safer from such enemies. The marsh is left to the
+coots and moorhens that from thence stock the brooks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+FARMER WILLUM’S PLACE: SNIPE SHOOTING
+
+
+One October morning towards the end of the month, Orion and I started
+to beat over Redcote Farm upon the standing invitation of the occupier.
+There was a certainty of sport of some kind, because the place had
+remained almost unchanged for the last century. It is “improvement”
+that drives away game and necessitates the pheasant preserve.
+
+The low whitewashed walls of the house were of a dull yellowish hue
+from the beating of the weather. They supported a vast breadth of
+thatched roof drilled by sparrows and starlings. Under the eaves the
+swallows’ nests adhered, and projecting shelves were fixed to prevent
+any inconvenience from them. Some of the narrow windows were still
+darkened with the black boarding put up in the days of the window tax.
+
+In the courtyard a number of stout forked stakes were used for putting
+the dairy buckets on, after being cleaned, to dry. No attempt was made
+to separate the business from the inner life of the house. Here in
+front these oaken buckets, scoured till nearly white, their iron
+handles polished like silver, were close under the eyes of any one
+looking out. By the front door a besom leaned against the wall that
+every comer might clean the mud from his boots; and you stepped at once
+from the threshold into the sitting-room. A lane led past the garden,
+if that could be called a lane which widened into a field and after
+rain was flooded so deeply as to be impassable to foot passengers.
+
+The morning we had chosen was fine; and after shaking hands with old
+Farmer “Willum,” whose shooting days were over, we entered the lane,
+and by it the fields. The meadows were small, enclosed with
+double-mounds, and thickly timbered, so that as the ground was level
+you could not see beyond the field in which you stood, and upon looking
+over the gate might surprise a flock of pigeons, a covey of partridges,
+or a rabbit out feeding. Though the tinted leaves were fast falling,
+the hedges were still full of plants and vegetation that prevented
+seeing through them. The “kuck-kuck” of the redwings came from the
+bushes—the first note of approaching winter—and the tips of the rushes
+were dead. Red haws on the hawthorn and hips on the briar sprinkled the
+hedge with bright spots of colour.
+
+The two spaniels went with such an eager rush into a thick
+double-mound, dashing heedlessly through the nettles and under the
+brambles, that we hastened to get one on each side of the hedge. A
+rustling—a short bark; another, then a movement among the rushes in the
+ditch, evidently not made by the dogs; then a silence. But the dogs
+come back, and as they give tongue the rabbit rushes past a bare spot
+on the slope of the bank. I fire—a snap shot—and cut out some fur, but
+do no further harm; the pellets bury themselves in the earth. But,
+startled and perhaps just stung by a stray shot, the rabbit bolts
+fairly at last twenty yards in front of Orion, the spaniel tearing at
+his heels.
+
+Up goes the double-barrel with a bright gleam as the sunlight glances
+on it. A second of suspense: then from the black muzzle darts a
+cylinder of tawny flame and an opening cone of white smoke: a sharp
+report rings on the ear. The rabbit rolls over and over, and is dead
+before the dog can seize him. After harling the rabbit, Orion hangs him
+high on a projecting branch, so that the man who is following us at a
+distance may easily find the game. He is a labourer, and we object to
+have him with us, as we know he would be certain to get in the way.
+
+We then tried a corner where two of these large mounds, meeting, formed
+a small copse in which grew a quantity of withy and the thick grasses
+that always border the stoles. A hare bolted almost directly the dogs
+went in: hares trust in their speed, rabbits in doubling for cover. I
+fired right and left, and missed: fairly missed with both barrels.
+Orion jumped upon the mound from the other side, and from that
+elevation sent a third cartridge after her.
+
+It was a long, a very long shot, but the hare perceptibly winced.
+Still, she drew easily away from the dogs, going straight for a distant
+gateway. But before it was reached the pace slackened; she made
+ineffectual attempts to double as the slow spaniels overtook her, but
+her strength was ebbing, and they quickly ran in. Reloading, and in
+none of the best of tempers, I followed the mound. The miss was of
+course the gun’s fault—it was foul; or the cartridges, or the bad
+quality of the powder.
+
+We passed the well-remembered hollow ash pollard, whence, years before,
+we had taken the young owls, and in which we had hidden the old
+single-barrel gun one sultry afternoon when it suddenly came on to
+thunder. The flashes were so vivid and the discharges seemingly so near
+that we became afraid to hold the gun, knowing that metal attracted
+electricity. So it was put in the hollow tree out of the wet, and with
+it the powder-flask, while we crouched under an adjacent hawthorn till
+the storm ceased.
+
+Then by the much-patched and heavy gate where I shot my first snipe,
+that rose out of the little stream and went straight up over the top
+bar. The emotion, for it was more than excitement, of that moment will
+never pass from memory. It was the bird of all others that I longed to
+kill, and certainly to a lad the most difficult. Day after day I went
+down into the water-meadows; first thinking over the problem of the
+snipe’s peculiar twisting flight. At one time I determined that I would
+control the almost irresistible desire to fire till the bird had
+completed his burst of zig-zag and settled to something like a straight
+line. At another I as firmly resolved to shoot the moment the snipe
+rose before he could begin to twist. But some unforeseen circumstance
+always interfered with the execution of these resolutions.
+
+Now the snipe got up unexpectedly right under foot; now one rose thirty
+yards ahead; now he towered straight up, forced to do so by the tall
+willows; and occasionally four or five rising together and calling
+“sceap, sceap” in as many different directions, made me hesitate at
+which to aim. The continual dwelling upon the problem rendered me
+nervous, so that I scarcely knew when I pulled the trigger.
+
+But one day, in passing this gateway, which was a long distance from
+the particular water-meadows where I had practised, and not thinking of
+snipes, suddenly one got up, and with a loud “sceap” darted over the
+gate. The long slender gun—the old single-barrel—came to the shoulder
+instinctively, without premeditation, and the snipe fell.
+
+Coming now to the brook, which was broad and bordered by a hedge on the
+opposite side, I held Orion’s gun while he leaped over. The bank was
+steep and awkward, but he had planned his leap so as to alight just
+where he could at once grasp an ash branch and so save himself from
+falling back into the water. He could not, however, stay suspended
+there, but had to scramble over the hedge, and then called for his gun.
+I leaned mine against a hollow withy pollard, and called “ready.”
+
+Taking his gun a few inches above the trigger guard (and with the guard
+towards his side), holding it lightly just where it seemed to balance
+in a perpendicular position, I gave it a slow heave rather than a
+throw, and it rose into the air. This peculiar _feeling_ hoist, as it
+were, caused it to retain the perpendicular position as it passed over
+brook and hedge in a low curve. As it descended it did indeed slope a
+little, and Orion caught it with one hand easily. The hedge being low
+he could see it coming; but guns are sometimes heaved in this way over
+hedges that have not been cropped for years. Then the gun suddenly
+appears in the air, perhaps fifteen feet high, while the catch depends
+not only upon the dexterity of the hand but the ear—to judge correctly
+where the person who throws it is standing, as he is invisible.
+
+The spaniels plunged in the brook among the flags, but though they made
+a great splashing nothing came of it till we approached a marshy place
+where was a pond. A moorhen then rose and scuttled down the brook, her
+legs dragging along the surface some distance before she could get up,
+and the sunshine sparkling on the water that dropped from her. I fired
+and knocked her over: at the sound of the discharge a bird rose from
+the low mound by the pond some forty yards ahead. My second barrel was
+empty in an instant.
+
+Both Orion’s followed; but the distance, the intervening pollard
+willows, or our excitement spoilt the aim. The woodcock flew off
+untouched, and made straight away from the territories we could beat
+into those that were jealously guarded by a certain keeper with whom
+Farmer “Willum” had waged war for years. “Come on!” shouted Orion as
+soon as he had marked the cock down in a mound two fields away.
+Throwing him my gun, I leaped the brook; and we at first raced, but on
+second thoughts walked slowly, for the mound. Running disturbs accuracy
+of fire, and a woodcock was much too rare a visitor for the slightest
+chance to be lost.
+
+As we approached we considered that very probably the cock would either
+lie close till we had walked past, and get up behind, or he would rise
+out of gunshot. What we were afraid of was his making for the
+preserves, which were not far off. So we tossed for the best position,
+and I lost. I had therefore to get over on the side of the hedge
+towards the preserves and to walk down somewhat faster than Orion, who
+was to keep (on his side) about thirty yards behind. The object was to
+flush the cock on his side, so that if missed the bird might return
+towards our territories. In a double-mound like this it is impossible
+to tell what a woodcock will do, but this was the best thing we could
+think of.
+
+About half-way down the hedge I heard Orion fire both barrels in quick
+succession—the mound was so thick I could not see through. The next
+instant the cock came over the top of the hedge just above my head.
+Startled at seeing me so close, he flew straight down along the summit
+of the bushes—a splendid chance to look at from a distance; but in
+throwing up the gun a projecting briar caught the barrels, and before I
+could recover it the bird came down at the side of the hedge.
+
+It was another magnificent chance; but again three pollard willows
+interfered, and as I fired the bark flew off one of them in small
+strips. Quickened by the whistling pellets, the cock suddenly lifted
+himself again to the top of the hedge to go over, and for a moment came
+full in view, and quite fifty yards away. I fired a snap shot as a
+forlorn hope, and lost sight of him; but the next instant I heard Orion
+call, “He’s down!” One single chance pellet had dropped the cock—he
+fell on the other side just under the hedge.
+
+We hastened back to the brook, thinking that the shooting would attract
+the keepers, and did not stay to look at the bird till safe over the
+water. The long beak, the plumage that seems painted almost in the
+exact tints of the dead brown leaves he loves so well, the eyes large
+by comparison and so curiously placed towards the poll of the head as
+if to see behind him—there was not a point that did not receive its
+share of admiration. We shot about half a dozen rabbits, two more
+hares, and a woodpigeon afterwards; but all these were nothing compared
+with the woodcock.
+
+How Farmer “Willum” chuckled over it—especially to think that we had
+cut out the game from the very batteries of the enemy! It was the one
+speck of bitterness in the old man’s character—his hatred of this
+keeper. Disabled himself by age and rheumatism from walking far, he
+heard daily reports from his men of this fellow coming over the
+boundary to shoot, or drive pheasant or partridge away. It was a sight
+to see Farmer “Willum” stretch his bulky length in his old armchair,
+right before the middle of the great fire of logs on the hearth,
+twiddling his huge thumbs, and every now and then indulging in a hearty
+laugh, followed by a sip at the “straight-cup.”
+
+There was a stag’s horn over the staircase: “Willum” loved to tell how
+it came there. One severe winter long since, the deer in the forest
+many miles away broke cover, forced by hunger, and came into the
+rickyards and even the gardens. Most of them were got back, but one or
+two wandered beyond trace. Those who had guns were naturally on the
+look-out; indeed, a regular hunt was got up—“Willum,” then young and
+active, in it of course. This chase was not successful; but early one
+morning, going to look for wild geese in the water-meadow with his
+long-barrelled gun, he saw something in a lonely rickyard. Creeping
+cautiously up, he rested the heavy gun on an ash stole, and the big
+duck-shot tore its way into the stag’s shoulder. Those days were gone,
+but still his interest in shooting was unabated.
+
+Nothing had been altered on the place since he was a boy: the rent even
+was the same. But all that is now changed—swept away before modern
+improvements; and the rare old man is gone too, and I think his only
+enemy also.
+
+There was nothing I used to look forward to, as the summer waned, with
+so much delight as the snipe shooting. Regularly as the swallow to the
+eaves in spring, the snipe comes back with the early frosts of autumn
+to the same well-known spots—to the bend of the brook or the boggy
+corner in the ploughed field—but in most uncertain numbers. Sometimes
+flocks of ten or twenty, sometimes only twos and threes are seen, but
+always haunting particular places.
+
+They have a special affection for peaty ground, black and spongy, where
+every footstep seems to squeeze water out of the soil with a slight
+hissing sound, and the boot cuts through the soft turf. There, where a
+slow stream winds in and out, unmarked by willow or bush, but fringed
+with green aquatic grasses growing on a margin of ooze, the snipe finds
+tempting food; or in the meadows where a little spring breaks forth in
+the ditch and does not freeze—for water which has just bubbled out of
+the earth possesses this peculiarity, and is therefore favourable to
+low forms of insect or slug life in winter—the snipe may be found when
+the ponds are bound with ice.
+
+Some of the old country folk used to make as much mystery about this
+bird as the cuckoo. Because it was seldom seen till the first fogs the
+belief was that it had lost its way in the mist at sea, and come inland
+by mistake.
+
+Just as in the early part of the year green buds and opening flowers
+welcome swallow and cuckoo, so the colours of the dying leaf prepare
+the way for the second feathered immigration in autumn. Once now and
+then the tints of autumn are so beautiful that the artist can hardly
+convey what he sees to canvas. The maples are aglow with orange, the
+oaks one mass of buff, the limes light gold, the elms a soft yellow. In
+the hawthorn thickets bronze spots abound; here and there a bramble
+leaf has turned a brilliant crimson (though many bramble leaves will
+remain a dull green all the winter through); the edible chestnut sheds
+leaves of a dark fawn hue, but all, scattered by the winds, presently
+resolve into a black pulp upon the earth. Noting these signs the
+sportsman gets out his dust-shot for the snipe, and the farmer, as he
+sees the fieldfare flying over after a voyage from Norway,
+congratulates himself that last month was reasonably dry, and enabled
+him to sow his winter seed.
+
+“Sceap—sceap!” and very often the snipe successfully carries out the
+intention expressed in his odd-sounding cry, and does escape in
+reality. Although I could not at first put my theory into practice, yet
+I found by experience that it was correct. He is the exception to the
+golden rule that the safest way lies in the middle, and that therefore
+you should fire not too soon nor too late, but half-way between. But
+the snipe must either be knocked over the instant he rises from the
+ground, and before he has time to commence his puzzling zig-zag flight,
+or else you must wait till he has finished his corkscrew burst.
+
+Then there is a moment just before he passes out of range when he
+glides in a straight line and may be hit. This singular zig-zag flight
+so deceives the eye as almost to produce the idea of a spiral movement.
+No barrel can ever be jerked from side to side swiftly enough, no
+hair-trigger is fine enough, to catch him then, except by the chance of
+a vast scattering over-charge, which has nothing to do with sport. If
+he rises at some little distance, then fire instantly, because by the
+time the zig-zag is done the range will be too great; if he starts up
+under your feet, out of a bunch of rushes, as is often the case, then
+give him law till his eccentric twist is finished.
+
+When the smoke has cleared away in the crisp air, there he lies, the
+yet warm breast on the frozen ground, to be lifted up not without a
+passing pity and admiration. The brown feathers are exquisitely shaded,
+and so exactly resemble the hue of the rough dead aquatic grass out of
+which he sprang that if you cast the bird among it you will have some
+trouble to find it again. To discover a living snipe on the ground is
+indeed a test of good eyesight; for as he slips in and out among the
+brown withered flags and the grey grass it requires not only a quick
+eye but the inbred sportsman’s instinct of perception (if such a phrase
+is permissible) to mark him out.
+
+If your shot has missed and merely splashed up the water or rattled
+against bare branches, then step swiftly behind a tree-trunk, and stay
+in ambuscade, keeping a sharp watch on him as he circles round high up
+in the air. Very often in a few minutes he will come back in a wide
+sweep, and drop scarcely a gun-shot distant in the same watercourse,
+when a second shot may be obtained. The little jack snipe, when
+flushed, will never fly far, if shot at several times in succession,
+still settling fifty or sixty yards farther on, and is easily bagged.
+
+Coming silently as possible round a corner, treading gently on the
+grass still white with hoar-frost in the shadow of the bushes, you may
+chance to spring a stray woodcock, which bird, if you lose a moment,
+will put the hedge between him and you. Artists used to seek for
+certain feathers which he carries, one in each wing, thinking to make
+of them a more delicate brush than the finest camel’s hair.
+
+In the evening I used to hide in the osier-beds on the edge of a great
+water-meadow; for now that the marshes are drained, and the black earth
+of the fens yields a harvest of yellow corn, the broad level meads
+which are irrigated to fertilise them are among the chief inland
+resorts of wild fowl. When the bright moon is rising, you walk in among
+the tapering osier-wands, the rustling sedges, and dead dry hemlock
+stems, and wait behind an aspen tree.
+
+In the thick blackthorn bush a round dark ball indicates the blackbird,
+who has puffed out his feathers to shield him from the frost, and who
+will sit so close and quiet that you may see the moonlight glitter on
+his eye. Presently comes a whistling noise of wings, and a loud “quack,
+quack!” as a string of ducks, their long necks stretched out, pass over
+not twenty yards high, slowly slanting downwards to the water. This is
+the favourable moment for the gun, because their big bodies are well
+defined against the sky, and aim can be taken; but to shoot anything on
+the ground at night, even a rabbit, whose white tail as he hops away is
+fairly visible, is most difficult.
+
+The baffling shadows and the moonbeams on the barrel, and the faint
+reflection from the dew or hoar-frost on the grass, prevent more than a
+general direction being given to the gun, even with the tiny piece of
+white paper which some affix to the muzzle-sight as a guide. From a
+punt with a swivel gun it is different, because the game is swimming
+and visible as black dots on the surface, and half a pound of shot is
+sure to hit something. But in the water-meadows the ducks get among the
+grass, and the larger water-carriers where they can swim usually have
+small raised banks, so that at a distance only the heads of the birds
+appear above them.
+
+So that the best time to shoot a duck is just as he slopes down to
+settle—first, because he is distinctly visible against the sky; next,
+because he is within easy range; and lastly, his flight is steady. If
+you attempt to have ducks driven towards you, though they may go right
+overhead, yet it will often be too high—for they rise at a sharp angle
+when frightened; and men who are excellent judges of distance when it
+is a hare running across the fallow, find themselves all at fault
+trying to shoot at any elevation. Perhaps this arises from the
+peculiarity of the human eye which draughtsmen are fond of illustrating
+by asking a tyro to correctly bisect a vertical line: a thing that
+looks easy, and is really only to be done by long practice.
+
+To make certain of selecting the right spot in the osiers over which
+the ducks will pass, for one or two evenings previously a look-out
+should be kept and their usual course observed; for all birds and
+animals, even the wildest wild fowl, are creatures of habit and custom,
+and having once followed a particular path will continue to use it
+until seriously disturbed. Evening after evening the ducks will rise
+above the horizon at the same place and almost at the same time, and
+fly straight to their favourite feeding place.
+
+If hit, the mallard falls with a thud on the earth, for he is a heavy
+bird; and few are more worthy of powder and shot either for his savoury
+flavour, far surpassing the tame duck, or the beauty of his burnished
+neck. With the ducks come teal and widgeon and moorhen, till the swampy
+meadow resounds with their strange cries. When ponds and lakes are
+frozen hard is the best time for sport in these irrigated fields. All
+day long the ducks will stand or waddle to and fro on the ice in the
+centre of the lake or mere, far out of reach and ready to rise at the
+slightest alarm. But at night they seek the meadow where the water,
+running swiftly in the carriers, never entirely freezes, and where, if
+the shallow spots become ice, the rising current flows over it and
+floods another place.
+
+There is, moreover, never any difficulty in getting the game when hit,
+because the water, except in the main carriers, which you can leap
+across, hardly rises to the ankle, and ordinary water-tight boots will
+enable you to wade wherever necessary. This is a great advantage with
+wild fowl, which are sometimes shot and lost in deep ooze and strong
+currents and eddies, and on thin ice where men cannot go and even good
+dogs are puzzled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+FERRETING: A RABBIT-HUNTER
+
+
+The ferreting season commences when the frosts have caused the leaves
+to drop, and the rabbits grow fat from feeding on bark. Early one
+December morning, Orion and I started, with our man Little John, to
+ferret a double-mound for our old friend Farmer “Willum” at Redcote.
+
+Little John was a labourer—one of those frequently working at odd times
+for Luke, the Rabbit-Contractor. We had nicknamed him Little John
+because of his great size and unwieldy proportions. He was the most
+useful man we knew for such work; his heart was so thoroughly in it.
+
+He was waiting for us before we had finished breakfast, with his tools
+and implements, having carefully prepared these while yet it was dark
+at home in his cottage. The nets require looking to before starting, as
+they are apt to get into a tangle, and there is nothing so annoying as
+to have to unravel strings with chilled fingers in a ditch. Some have
+to be mended, having been torn; some are cast aside altogether because
+weak and rotten. The twine having been frequently saturated with water
+has decayed. All the nets are of a light yellow colour from the clay
+and sand that has worked into the string.
+
+These nets almost filled a sack, into which he also cast a pair of
+“owl-catchers,” gloves of stout white leather, thick enough to turn a
+thorn while handling bushes, or to withstand the claws of an owl
+furiously resisting capture. His ferrets cost him much thought, which
+to take and which to leave behind. He had also to be particular how he
+fed them—they must be eager for prey, and yet they must not be starved,
+else they would gorge on the blood of the first rabbit, and become
+useless for hunting.
+
+Two had to be muzzled—an operation of some difficulty that generally
+results in a scratched hand. A small piece of small but strong twine is
+passed through the jaws behind the tusk-like teeth, and tightly tied
+round, so tightly as almost to cut into the skin. This is the old way
+of muzzling a ferret, handed down from generations: Little John scorns
+the muzzles that can be bought at shops, and still more despises the
+tiny bells to hang round the neck. The first he says often come off,
+and the second embarrass the ferret and sometimes catch in projecting
+rootlets and hold it fast. He has, too, a line—many yards of stout
+twine wound about a short stick—to line a ferret if necessary.
+
+The ferrets are placed in a smaller bag, tightly tied at the top—for
+they will work through and get out if any aperture be left. Inside the
+bag is a little hay for them to lay on. He prefers the fitchew ferret
+as he calls it; that is the sort that are coloured like a polecat. He
+says they are fiercer, larger of make and more powerful. But he has
+also a couple of white ones with pink eyes. Besides the sack of nets,
+the bag of ferrets, and a small bundle in a knotted handkerchief—his
+“nuncheon”—which in themselves make a tolerable load, he has brought a
+billhook, and a “navigator,” or draining-tool.
+
+This is a narrow spade of specially stout make; the blade is hollow and
+resembles an exaggerated gouge, and the advantage is that in digging
+out a rabbit the tool is very apt to catch under a root, when an
+ordinary spade may bend and become useless. The “navigator” will stand
+anything, and being narrow is also more handy. All these implements
+Little John has prepared by the dim light of a horn lantern in the shed
+at the back of his cottage. A mug of ale while we get our guns greatly
+cheers him, and unlooses his tongue.
+
+All the way to Redcote he impresses on us the absolute necessity of
+silence while ferreting, and congratulates us on having a nearly still
+day. He is a little doubtful about Orion’s spaniel and whether it will
+keep quiet or not.
+
+When we reach the double-mound, his talk entirely ceases: he is as
+silent and as rugged as a pollard oak. By the top of the mound the sack
+of nets is thrown down on the sward and opened. As there are more holes
+on the other side of the hedge Orion goes over with Little John, and I
+proceed to set up the nets on mine.
+
+I found some difficulty in getting at the bank, the bushes being so
+thick, and had to use the billhook and chop a way in: I heard Little
+John growling about this in a whisper to Orion. Very often before going
+with the ferrets, people send a man or two a few hours previously to
+chop and clear the bushes. The effect is that the rabbits will not bolt
+freely. They hear the men chopping, and the vibration of the earth as
+they clumsily climb over the banks, and will not come out till
+absolutely forced. If it is done at all, it should be done a week
+beforehand. That was why Little John grumbled at my chopping though he
+knew it was necessary.
+
+To set up a rabbit net you must arrange it so that it covers the whole
+of the mouth of the hole, for if there is any opening between it and
+the bank the rabbit will slip through. He will not face the net unless
+obliged to. Along the upper part, if the bank is steep, so that the net
+will not lie on it of itself, two or three little twigs should be
+thrust through the meshes into the earth to suspend it.
+
+These twigs should be no larger than are used by birds in constructing
+their nests; just strong enough to hold the net in place and no more.
+On the other hand, care must be taken that no stout projecting root
+catches a corner of the net, else it will not draw up properly and the
+rabbit will escape.
+
+Little John, not satisfied with my assurance that I had netted all the
+holes my side, now came over—crawling on hands and knees that he might
+not jar the bank—to examine for himself. His practised eye detected two
+holes that I had missed: one on the top of the mound much overhung by
+dead grass, and one under a stole. These he attended to. He then
+crawled up on the mound two or three yards below the end of the bury,
+and with his own hands stretched a larger net right across the top of
+the bank, so that if a rabbit did escape he would run into this. To be
+still more sure he stretched another similar net across the whole width
+of the mound at the other end of the bury.
+
+He then undid the mouth of the ferret-bag, holding it between his
+knees—the ferrets immediately attempted to struggle out: he selected
+two and then tied it up again. With both these in his own hands, for he
+would trust nothing to another, he slipped quietly back to Orion’s
+side, and so soon as he saw I was standing well back placed them in
+different holes.
+
+Almost the next instant one came out my side disarranging a net. I got
+into the ditch, hastily reset the net, and put the ferret to an
+adjacent hole, lifting up the corner of the net there for it to creep
+in. Unlike the weasel, a ferret once outside a hole seems at a loss,
+and wanders slowly about, till chance brings him to a second. The
+weasel used to hunting is no sooner out of one hole than he darts away
+to the next. But this power the ferret has partially lost from
+confinement.
+
+For a moment the ferret hesitated inside the hole, as if undecided
+which of two passages to take: then he started, and I lost sight of his
+tail. Hardly had I got back to my stand than I heard Little John leap
+into the ditch his side: the next minute I saw the body of the rabbit
+which he had killed thrown out into the field.
+
+I stood behind a somewhat advanced bush that came out into the meadow
+like a buttress, and kept an eye on the holes along the bank. It is
+essential to stand well back from the holes, and, if possible, out of
+sight. In a few moments something moved, and I saw the head of a rabbit
+at the mouth of a hole just behind the net. He looked through the
+meshes as through a lattice, and I could see his nostrils work, as he
+considered within himself how to pass this thing. It was but for a
+moment; the ferret came behind, and wild with hereditary fear, the
+rabbit leaped into the net.
+
+The force of the spring not only drew the net together, but dragged out
+the peg, and rabbit and net inextricably entangled rolled down the bank
+to the bottom of the ditch. I jumped into the ditch and seized the net;
+when there came a hoarse whisper: “Look sharp you, measter: put up
+another net fust—_he_ can’t get out; hould un under your arm, _or in
+your teeth_.”
+
+I looked up, and saw Little John’s face peering over the mound. He had
+thrust himself up under the bushes; his hat was off; his weather-beaten
+face bleeding from a briar, but he could not feel the scratch so
+anxious was he that nothing should escape. I pulled another net from my
+pocket, and spread it roughly over the hole; then more slowly took the
+rabbit from the other net.
+
+You should never hold a rabbit up till you have got fast hold of his
+hind legs; he will so twist and work himself as to get free from any
+other grasp. But when held by the hind legs and lifted from the ground
+he can do nothing. I now returned to my buttress of bushes and waited.
+The rabbits did not bolt my side again for a while. Every now and then
+I saw, or heard, Orion or Little John leap into their ditch, and well
+knew what it meant before the dead rabbit was cast out to fall with a
+helpless thud upon the sward.
+
+Once I saw a rabbit’s head at the mouth of a hole, and momentarily
+expected him to dart forth driven by the same panic fear. But either
+the ferret passed, or there was another side-tunnel—the rabbit went
+back. Some few minutes afterwards Little John exclaimed: “Look out,
+you; ferret’s out!” One of the ferrets had come out of a hole and was
+aimlessly—as it appeared—roaming along the bank.
+
+As he came nearest my side, I got quietly into the ditch and seized
+him, and put him into a hole. To my surprise he refused to go in—I
+pushed him: he returned and continued to try to come out till I gave
+him a sharp fillip with the finger, when he shook the dust and
+particles of dry earth from his fur with a shiver, as if in protest,
+and slowly disappeared inside the hole.
+
+As I was creeping out of the deep ditch on hands and knees, I heard
+Orion call angrily to the spaniel to come to heel. Hitherto the spaniel
+had sat on his haunches behind Orion fairly quiet and still, though not
+without an occasional restless movement. But now he broke suddenly from
+all control, and disregarding Orion’s anger—though with hanging
+tail—rushed into the hedge, and along the top of the mound where there
+was a thick mass of dead grass. Little John hurled a clod of clay at
+him, but before I was quite out of the ditch the spaniel gave tongue,
+and at the same moment I saw a rabbit come from the ditch and run like
+mad across the field.
+
+The dog gave chase—I rushed for my gun, which was some yards off,
+placed against a hollow withy tree. The haste disconcerted the aim—the
+rabbit too was almost fifty yards away when I fired. But the shot broke
+one hind leg—it trailed behind—and the spaniel had him instantly. “Look
+at yer nets,” said Little John in a tone of suppressed indignation, for
+he disliked the noise of a gun, as all other noises.
+
+I did look, and found that one net had been partly pushed aside; yet to
+so small an extent that I should hardly have believed it possible for
+the rabbit to have crept through. He must have slipped out without the
+slightest sound and quietly got on the top of the mound without being
+seen. But there, alas! he found a wide net stretched right across the
+bank so that to slip down the mound on the top was impossible. This
+would certainly have been his course had not the net been there.
+
+It was now doubtless that the spaniel caught wind of him, and the scent
+was so strong that it overcame his obedience. The moment the dog got on
+the bank, the rabbit slipped down into the rushes in the ditch—I did
+not see him because my back was turned in the act to scramble out.
+Then, directly the spaniel gave tongue the rabbit darted for the open,
+hoping to reach the buries in the hedge on the opposite side of the
+meadow.
+
+This incident explained why the ferret seemed so loth to go back into
+the hole. He had crept out some few moments behind the rabbit and in
+his aimless uncertain manner was trying to follow the scent along the
+bank. He did not like being compelled to give up this scent and to
+search again for another. “Us must be main careful how us fixes our
+nets, you,” said Little John, going as far as he could in reproof of my
+negligence.
+
+The noise of the gun, the barking, and talking was of course heard by
+the rabbits still in the bury, and as if to show that Little John was
+right, for a while they ceased to bolt. Standing behind the
+bushes—against which I now placed the gun to be nearer at hand—I
+watched the nets till my eye was caught by the motions of the
+ferret-bag. It lay on the grass and had hitherto been inert. But now
+the bag reared itself up, and then rolled over, to again rise and again
+tumble. The ferrets left in it in reserve were eager to get out—sharp
+set on account of a scanty breakfast—and their motions caused the bag
+to roll along a short distance.
+
+I could see Orion on the other side of the mound tolerably well because
+he was standing up and the leaves had fallen from the upper part of the
+bushes. Little John was crouched in the ditch: the dead grasses,
+“gicks,” withered vines of bryony, the thistles, and dark shrivelled
+fern concealed him.
+
+There was a round black sloe on the blackthorn beside me, the beautiful
+gloss, or bloom, on it made it look like a tiny plum. It tasted not
+only sour, but seemed to positively fill the mouth with a rough acid.
+Overhead light grey clouds, closely packed but not rainy, drifted very
+slowly before a N.E. upper current. Occasionally a brief puff of wind
+came through the bushes rustling the dead leaves that still remained on
+the oaks.
+
+Despite the cold, something of Little John’s intense concentration
+communicated itself to us: we waited and watched with eager patience.
+After a while he got out of the ditch where he had been listening with
+his ear close against the bank, and asked me to pass him the
+ferret-bag. He took out another ferret and lined it—that is, attached
+one end of a long string to its neck, and then sent it in.
+
+He watched which way the ferret turned, and then again placed his head
+upon the hard clay to listen. Orion had to come and hold the line,
+while he went two or three yards farther down, got into the ditch and
+once more listened carefully. “He be about the middle of the mound
+you,” he said to me; “he be between you and I. Lor! look out.”
+
+There was a low rumbling sound—I expected to see a rabbit bolt into one
+of my nets, I heard Little John moving some leaves, and then he
+shouted, “Give I a net, you—quick. Lor! here be another hole: he’s
+coming!” I looked over the mound and saw Little John, his teeth set and
+staring at a hole which had no net, his great hands open ready to
+pounce instantly like some wild animal on its prey. In an instant the
+rabbit bolted—he clutched it and clasped it tight to his chest. There
+was a moment of struggling, the next the rabbit was held up for a
+moment and then cast across his knee.
+
+It was always a sight to see Little John’s keen delight in “wristing”
+their necks. He affected utter unconsciousness of what he was doing,
+looked you in the face, and spoke about some indifferent subject. But
+all the while he was feeling the rabbit’s muscles stretch before the
+terrible grasp of his hands, and an expression of complacent
+satisfaction flitted over his features as the neck gave with a sudden
+looseness, and in a moment what had been a living straining creature
+became limp.
+
+The ferret came out after the rabbit; he immediately caught it and
+thrust it into his pocket. There were still two ferrets in—one that was
+suspected to be gorging on a rabbit in a _cul de sac_, and the other
+lined, and which had gone to join that sanguinary feast. The use of the
+line was to trace where the loose ferret lay. “Chuck I the show’l,
+measter,” said Little John.
+
+I gave the “navigator” tool a heave over the hedge; it fell and stuck
+upright in the sward. Orion handed it to him. He first filled up the
+hole from which a rabbit had just bolted with a couple of “spits,”
+_i.e._ spadefuls, and then began to dig on the top of the mound.
+
+This digging was very tedious. The roots of the thorn bushes and trees
+constantly impeded it, and had to be cut. Then upon at last getting
+down to the hole, it was found that the right place had not been hit by
+several feet. Here was the line and the lined ferret—he had got hitched
+in a projecting root, and was furiously struggling to go forward to the
+feast of blood.
+
+Another spell of digging—this time still slower because Little John was
+afraid lest the edge of his tool should suddenly slip through and cut
+his ferret on the head, and perhaps kill it. At last the place was
+reached and the ferret drawn forth still clinging to its victim. The
+rabbit was almost beyond recognition as a rabbit. The poor creature had
+been stopped by a _cul de sac_, and the ferret came upon him from
+behind.
+
+As the hole was small the rabbit’s body completely filled it, and the
+ferret could not scramble past to get at the spot behind the ear where
+it usually seizes. The ferret had therefore deliberately gnawn away the
+hindquarters and so bored a passage. The ferret being so gorged was
+useless for further hunting and was replaced in the bag. But Little
+John gave him a drink of water first from the bottom of the ditch.
+
+Orion and I, wearied with the digging, now insisted on removing to the
+next bury, for we felt sure that the remaining rabbits in this one
+would not bolt. Little John had no choice but to comply, but he did so
+with much reluctance and many rueful glances back at the holes from
+which he took the nets. He was sure, he said, that there were at least
+half-a-dozen still in the bury: he only wished he might have all that
+he could get out of it. But we imperiously ordered a removal.
+
+We went some thirty yards down the mound, passing many smaller buries,
+and chose a spot perfectly drilled with holes. While Little John was in
+the ditch putting up nets, we slily undid the ferret-bag and turned
+three ferrets at once loose into the holes. “Lor! measter, measter,
+what be you at?” cried Little John, quite beside himself. “You’ll spoil
+all on it. Lor!”
+
+A sharp report as Orion fired at a rabbit that bolted almost under
+Little John’s fingers drowned his remonstrances, and he had to scramble
+out of the way quick. Bang! bang! right and left: the firing became
+rapid. There being no nets to alarm the rabbits and three ferrets
+hunting them, they tumbled out in all directions as fast as we could
+load. Now the cartridges struck branches and shattered them. Now the
+shot flattened itself against sarsen stones imbedded in the mound. The
+rabbits had scarce a yard to bolt from one hole to another, so that it
+was sharp work.
+
+Little John now gave up all hope, and only pleaded piteously for his
+ferrets. “Mind as you doan’t hit ’em, measter; doant’ee shoot into a
+hole, you.” For half an hour we had some really good shooting: then it
+began to slacken, and we told him to catch his ferrets and go on to the
+next bury. I am not sure that he would not have rebelled outright but
+just then a boy came up carrying a basket of provisions, and a large
+earthenware jar with a bung cork, full of humming ale. Farmer Willum
+had sent this, and the strong liquor quite restored Little John’s good
+humour. It really was ale—such as is not to be got for money.
+
+The boy said that he had seen Farmer Willum’s hereditary enemy, the
+keeper, watching us from his side of the boundary, doubtless attracted
+by the sound of the firing. He said also that there was a pheasant in a
+little copse beside the brook. We sent him out again to reconnoitre: he
+returned and repeated that the keeper had gone, and that he thought he
+saw him enter the distant fir plantations. So we left the boy to help
+Little John at the next bury—a commission that made him grin with
+delight, and suited the other very well, since the noisy guns were
+going away, and he could use his nets.
+
+We took the lined ferret with us, and started after the pheasant. Just
+as we approached the copse, the spaniel gave tongue on the other side
+of the hedge. Orion had tied him up to a bush, wishing to leave him
+with Little John. But the spaniel tore and twisted till he got loose
+and had followed us—keeping out of sight—till now crossing the scent of
+a rabbit he set up his bark. We called him to heel, and I am afraid he
+got a kick. But the pheasant was alarmed, and rose before we could
+properly enfilade the little copse, where we should most certainly have
+had him. He flew high and straight for the fir plantations, where it
+was useless to follow.
+
+However, we leaped the brook and entered the keeper’s territory under
+shelter of a thick double-mound. We slipped the lined ferret into a
+small bury, and succeeded in knocking over a couple of rabbits. The
+object of using the lined ferret was because we could easily recover
+it. This was pure mischief, for there were scores of rabbits on our own
+side. But then there was just a little spice of risk in this, and we
+knew Willum would gloat over it.
+
+After firing these two shots we got back again as speedily as possible,
+and once more assisted Little John. We could not, however, quite resist
+the pleasure of shooting a rabbit occasionally and so tormenting him.
+We left one hole each side without a net, and insisted on the removal
+of the net that stretched across the top of the bank. This gave us a
+shot now and then, and the removal of the cross net allowed the rabbit
+some little law.
+
+Notwithstanding these drawbacks—to him—Little John succeeded in making
+a good bag. He stayed till it was quite dark to dig out a ferret that
+had killed a rabbit in the hole. He took his money for his day’s work
+with indifference: but when we presented him with two couple of clean
+rabbits his gratitude was too much for him to express. The gnawn and
+“blown” rabbits [by shot] were his perquisite, the clean rabbits an
+unexpected gift. It was not their monetary value; it was the fact that
+they were rabbits.
+
+The man’s instinct for hunting was so strong that it seemed to overcome
+everything else. He would walk miles—after a long day’s farm work—just
+to help old Luke, the rabbit contractor, bring home the rabbits in the
+evening from the Upper Woods. He worked regularly for one farmer, and
+did his work well: he was a sober man too as men go, that is he did not
+get drunk more than once a month. A strong man must drink now and then:
+but he was not a sot, and took nine-tenths of his money faithfully home
+to his wife and children.
+
+In the winter when farm work is not so pressing he was allowed a week
+off now and then, which he spent in ferreting for the farmers, and
+sometimes for Luke, and of course he was only too glad to get such an
+engagement as we gave him. Sometimes he made a good thing of his
+ferreting: sometimes when the weather was bad it was a failure. But
+although a few shillings were of consequence to him, it really did not
+seem to be the money-value but the sport that he loved. To him that
+sport was all-absorbing.
+
+His ferrets were well looked after, and he sometimes sold one for a
+good price to keepers. As a rule a man who keeps ferrets is suspected:
+but Little John was too well understood, and he had no difficulty in
+begging a little milk for them.
+
+His tenacity in pursuit of a rabbit was always a source of wonder to
+me. In rain, in wind, in frost; his feet up to the ankle in the
+ice-cold slush at the bottom of a ditch: no matter what the weather or
+how rough, he patiently stood to his nets. I have known him stand the
+whole day long in a snowstorm—the snow on the ground and in the holes,
+the flakes drifting against his face—and never once show impatience.
+All he disliked was wind—not on account of discomfort, but because the
+creaking of the branches and the howling of the blast made such a noise
+that it was impossible to tell where the rabbit would bolt.
+
+He congratulated himself that evening because he had recovered all his
+ferrets. Sometimes one will lie in and defy all efforts to bring it
+out. One plan is to place a dead fresh rabbit at the mouth of the hole
+which may tempt the ferret to come and seize it. In large woods there
+are generally one or more ferrets wandering loose in the season, that
+have escaped from the keepers or poachers.
+
+If the keeper sees one he tries to catch it; failing that, he puts a
+charge of shot into it. Some keepers think nothing of shooting their
+own ferrets if they will not come when called by the chirrup with the
+lips, or displease them in other ways. They do not care, because they
+can have as many as they like. Little John made pets of his: they
+obeyed him very well as a rule.
+
+Poaching men are sometimes charged with stealing ferrets, _i.e._ with
+picking up and carrying off those that keepers have lost. A ferret is,
+however, a difficult thing to identify and swear to.
+
+Those who go poaching with ferrets choose a moonlight night: if it is
+dark it is difficult to find the holes. Small buries are best because
+so much more easily managed, and the ferret is usually lined. If a
+large bury is attempted, they take the first half-dozen that bolt and
+then move on to another. The first rabbits come out rapidly; the rest
+linger as if warned by the fate of their companions. Instead of wasting
+time over them it is best to move to another place.
+
+Unless a keeper should chance to pass up the hedgerow there is
+comparatively little risk, for the men are in the ditch and invisible
+ten yards away under the bushes and make no noise. It is more difficult
+to get home with the game: but it is managed. Very small buries with
+not more than four or five holes may be ferreted even on the darkest
+nights by carefully observing beforehand where the holes are situate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+A WINTER NIGHT: OLD TRICKS: PHEASANT-STALKING: MATCHLOCK _versus_
+BREECH-LOADER: CONCLUSION
+
+
+When the moon is full and nearly at the zenith it seems to move so
+slowly that the shadows scarcely change their position. In winter, when
+the branches are bare, a light that is nearly vertical over a tree can
+cast but little shadow, and that falls immediately around the trunk. So
+that the smallness of the shadow itself and the slowness of its motion
+together tend to conceal it.
+
+The snow on the ground increases the sense of light, and in approaching
+the wood the scene is even more distinct than during the gloomy day.
+The tips of the short stubble that has not yet been ploughed in places
+just protrude above the surface, and the snow, frozen hard, crunches
+with a low sound under foot. But for that all is perfectly still. The
+level upland cornfields stretch away white and vacant to the
+hills—white, too, and clear against the sky. The plain is silent, and
+nothing that can be seen moves upon its surface.
+
+On the verge of the wood which occupies the sloping ground there stands
+a great oak tree, and down one side of its trunk is a narrow white
+streak of snow. Leaning against the oak and looking upwards, every
+branch and twig is visible, lit up by the moon. Overhead the stars are
+dimmed, but they shine more brightly yonder above the hills. Such
+leaves as have not yet fallen hang motionless: those that are lying on
+the ground are covered by the snow, and thus held fast from rustling
+even were the wind to blow. But there is not the least breath—a great
+frost is always quiet, profoundly quiet—and the silence is undisturbed
+even by the fall of a leaf. The frost that kills them holds the leaves
+till it melts, and then they drop.
+
+The tall ash poles behind in the wood stand stark and straight,
+pointing upwards, and it is possible to see for some distance between
+them. No lesser bats flit to and fro outside the fence under the
+branches; no larger ones pass above the tops _of_ the trees. There
+seems, indeed, a total absence of life. The pheasants are at roost in
+the warmer covers; and the woodpigeons are also perched—some in the
+detached oaks of the hedgerows, particularly those that are thickly
+grown with ivy about the upper branches. Up in the great beeches the
+rooks are still and silent; sometimes the boughs are encrusted with
+rime about their very claws.
+
+Leaving the oak now and skirting the wood, after a while the meadows on
+the lower ground are reached; and here perhaps the slight scampering
+sound of a rabbit may be heard. But as they can see and hear you so far
+in the bright light and silence, they will most likely be gone before
+you can get near. They are restless—very restless; first because of the
+snow, and next because of the moonlight. The hares, unable to find
+anything on the hills or the level white plain above, have come down
+here and search along the sheltered hedgerows for leaf and blade.
+To-night the rabbits will run almost like the hares, to and fro, hither
+and thither.
+
+In the thickest hawthorns the blackbirds and lesser feathered creatures
+are roosting, preferring the hedgerow to the more open wood. Some of
+the lesser birds have crept into the ivy around the elms, and which
+crowns the tops of the withy pollards. Wrens and sparrows have gone to
+the hayricks, roosting in little holes in the sides under the slightly
+projecting thatch. They have taken refuge too in the nest-holes made in
+the thatched eaves of the sheds: tits are there also; and sometimes two
+or three of the latter are captured at once in such holes.
+
+A dark line across the lower meadows marks the course of the brook; it
+is dark because the snow falling on the water melted. Even now there is
+a narrow stream unfrozen; though the banks against which it chafes are
+hard, and will not take the impression of the moorhen’s foot. The
+water-rats that in summertime played and fed along the margin among the
+flags are rarely seen in winter. In walking in daylight by the brook
+now their plunge into the water will not be heard, nor can they be seen
+travelling at the bottom.
+
+They lay up a store of food in a hole away from the stream, generally
+choosing the banks or higher ground in the withy-beds—places that are
+not often flooded. Their ordinary holes, which are half, and sometimes
+quite, under water, will not do for winter; they would be frozen in
+them, and perhaps their store of food would be spoiled; besides which
+the floods cause the stream to rise above its banks, and they could not
+exist under water for weeks together.
+
+Still further down, where the wood ends in scattered bushes and
+withy-beds, the level shore of the shallow mere succeeds. The once
+soft, oozy ground is now firm; the rushes are frozen stiff, and the ice
+for some distance out is darkened by the aquatic weeds frozen in it.
+From here the wood, rising up the slope, comes into view at once—the
+dark trees, the ash poles, the distant beeches, the white crest of the
+hill—all still and calm under the moonlight. The level white plain of
+ice behind stretches away, its real extent concealed by the islands of
+withy and the dark pines along the distant shore; while elsewhere the
+ice is not distinguishable from the almost equally level fields that
+join it. Looking now more closely on the snow, the tracks of hares and
+rabbits that have crossed and recrossed the ice are visible.
+
+In passing close to the withy-beds to return to the wood some branches
+have to be pushed aside and cause a slight noise. Immediately a crowd
+of birds rise out of the withies, where they have been roosting, and
+scatter into the night. They are redwings and thrushes; every withy-bed
+is full of them. After wheeling about in the air they will presently
+return—first one, then three or four, and finally the flock, to their
+roosting-place.
+
+It is easy now to walk through the wood without making a noise: there
+is room to pass between the stoles of ash; and the dead sticks that
+would have cracked under foot are covered with snow. But be careful how
+you step; for in some places the snow has fallen upon a mass of leaves
+filling a swampy hollow. Above there is a thin crust of snow, but under
+the leaves the oozy ground is still soft.
+
+Upon the dark pines the snow has lodged, making the boughs bend
+downwards. Where the slope becomes a hill the ash stoles and nut-tree
+bushes are far apart and thinner, so that there are wide white spaces
+around them. Regaining now the top of the hill where the plain comes to
+the verge of the wood, there is a clear view down across the ash poles
+to the withies, the white mere, and the meadows below. Everywhere
+silence, stillness, sleep.
+
+In the high trees slumbering creatures; in the hedgerows, in the
+bushes, and the withies birds with feathers puffed out, slumbering; in
+the banks, under the very ground, dormant animals. A quiet cold that at
+first does not seem cold because it is so quiet, but which gradually
+seizes on and stills the sap of plants and the blood of living things.
+A ruthless frost, still, subtle, and irresistible, that will slay the
+bird on its perch and weaken the swift hare.
+
+The most cruel of all things this snow and frost, because of the
+torture of hunger which the birds must feel even in their sleep. But
+how beautiful the round full moon, the brilliant light, the white
+landscape, the graceful lines of the pine brought out by the snow, the
+hills yonder, and the stars rising above them!
+
+It was on just such a night as this that some years since a most
+successful raid was made upon this wood by a band of poachers coming
+from a distance. The pheasants had been kept later than usual to be
+shot by a Christmas party, and perhaps this had caused a relaxation of
+vigilance. The band came in a cart of some kind; the marks of the
+wheels were found on the snow where it had been driven off the highway
+and across a field to some ricks. There, no doubt, the horse and cart
+were kept out of sight behind the ricks, while the men, who were
+believed to have worn smock-frocks, entered the wood.
+
+The bright moonlight made it easy to find the pheasants, and they were
+potted in plenty. Finding that there was no opposition, the gang
+crossed from the wood to some outlying plantations and continued their
+work there. The keeper never heard a sound. He was an old man—a man who
+had been on the estate all his life—and had come in late in the evening
+after a long round. He sat by the fire of split logs and enjoyed the
+warmth after the bitter cold and frost; and, as he himself confessed,
+took an extra glass in consideration of the severity of the weather.
+
+His wife was old and deaf. Neither of them heard the guns nor the dogs.
+Those in the kennels close to the cottage, and very likely one or more
+indoors, must have barked at the noise of the shooting. But if any dim
+sense of the uproar did reach the keeper’s ear he put it down to the
+moon, at which dogs will bay. As for his assistants, they had quietly
+gone home, so soon as they felt sure that the keeper was housed for the
+night. Long immunity from attack had bred over-confidence; the staff
+also was too small for the extent of the place, and this had doubtless
+become known. No one sleeps so soundly as an agricultural labourer; and
+as the nearest hamlet was at some distance it is not surprising that
+they did not wake.
+
+In the early morning a fogger going to fodder his cattle came across a
+pheasant lying dead on the path, the snow stained with its blood. He
+picked it up, and put it under his smock-frock, and carried it to the
+pen, where he hid it under some litter, intending to take it home. But
+afterwards, as he crossed the fields towards the farm, he passed near
+the wood and observed the tracks of many feet and a gap in the fence.
+He looked through the gap and saw that the track went into the
+preserves. On second thoughts he went back for the pheasant and took it
+to his master.
+
+The farmer, who was sitting down to table, quietly ate his breakfast,
+and then strolled over to the keeper’s cottage with the bird. This was
+the first intimation: the keeper could hardly believe it, till he
+himself went down and followed the trail of foot-marks. There was not
+the least difficulty in tracing the course of the poachers through the
+wood; the feathers were lying about; the scorched paper (for they used
+muzzle-loaders), broken boughs, and shot-marks were all too plain. But
+by this time the gang were well away, and none were captured or
+identified.
+
+The extreme severity of the frost naturally caused people to stay
+indoors, so that no one noticed the cart going through the village; nor
+could the track of its wheels be discerned from others on the snow of
+the highway beaten down firm. Even had the poachers been disturbed, it
+is doubtful if so small a staff of keepers could have done anything to
+stop them. As it was, they not only made a good haul—the largest made
+for years in that locality—but quite spoiled the shooting.
+
+There are no white figures passing through the peaceful wood to-night
+and firing up into the trees. It is perfectly still. The broad moon
+moves slow, and the bright rays light up tree and bush, so that it is
+easy to see through, except where the brambles retain their leaves and
+are fringed with the dead ferns.
+
+The poaching of the present day is carried on with a few appliances
+only. An old-fashioned poacher could employ a variety of “engines,” but
+the modern has scarcely any choice. There was, for instance, a very
+effective mode of setting a wire with a springe or bow. A stout stick
+was thrust into the ground, and then bent over into an arch. When the
+wire was thrown it instantly released the springe, which sprang up and
+drew it fast round the neck of the hare or rabbit, whose fore feet were
+lifted from the earth. Sometimes a growing sapling was bent down for
+the bow if it chanced to stand conveniently near a run. The hare no
+sooner put her head into the noose than she was suspended and
+strangled.
+
+I tried the springe several times for rabbits, and found it answer; but
+the poacher cannot use it because it is so conspicuous. The stick
+itself, rising above the grass, is visible at some distance, and when
+thrown it holds the hare or rabbit up for any one to see that passes
+by. With a wire set in the present manner the captured animal lies
+extended, and often rolls into a furrow and is further hidden.
+
+The springe was probably last employed by the mole-catchers. Their
+wooden traps were in the shape of a small tunnel, with a wire in the
+middle which, when the mole passed through, set free a bent stick. This
+stick pulled the wire and hung the mole. Such mole-catchers’ bows or
+springes used to be seen in every meadow, but are now superseded by the
+iron trap.
+
+Springes with horsehair nooses on the ground were also set for
+woodcocks and for wild ducks. It is said that a springe of somewhat
+similar construction was used for pheasants. Horsehair nooses are still
+applied for capturing woodpeckers and the owls that spend the day in
+hollow trees, being set round the hole by which they leave the tree. A
+more delicate horsehair noose is sometimes set for finches and small
+birds. I tried it for bullfinches, but did not succeed from lack of the
+dexterity required. The modes of using bird-lime were numerous, and
+many of them are in use for taking song-birds.
+
+But the enclosure of open lands, the strict definition of footpaths,
+closer cultivation, and the increased value of game have so checked the
+poacher’s operations with nets that in many districts the net may be
+said to be extinct. It is no longer necessary to bush the stubbles
+immediately after reaping. Brambles are said to have been the best for
+hindering the net, which frequently swept away an entire covey, old
+birds and young together. Stubbles are now so short that no birds will
+lie in them, and the net would not be successful there if it were
+tried.
+
+The net used to be so favourite an “engine” because partridges and
+pheasants will run rather than fly. In the case of partridges the
+poacher had first to ascertain the haunt of the covey, which he could
+do by looking for where they roost at night: the spot is often worn
+almost bare of grass and easily found. Or he could listen in the
+evening for the calling of the birds as they run together. The net
+being set, he walked very slowly down the wind towards the covey. It
+could not be done too quietly or gently, because if one got up all the
+rest would immediately take wing; for partridges act in concert. If he
+took his time and let them run in front of him he secured the whole
+number. That was the principle; but the nets were of many kinds: the
+partridges were sometimes driven in by a dog. The partridges that
+appear in the market on the morning of the 1st of September are said to
+be netted, though probably by those who have a right to do so. These
+birds by nature lend themselves to such tricks, being so timid. It is
+said that if continually driven to and fro they will at last cower, and
+can be taken by hand or knocked over with a stick.
+
+The sight of a paper kite in the air makes them motionless till forced
+to rise; and there was an old dodge of ringing a bell at night, which
+so alarmed the covey that they remained still till the net was ready,
+when a sudden flash of light drove them into it. Imagine a poacher
+ringing a bell nowadays! Then, partridges were peculiarly liable to be
+taken; now, perhaps, they escape better than any other kind of game.
+Except with a gun the poacher can hardly touch them, and after the
+coveys have been broken up it is not worth his while to risk a shot
+very often. If only their eggs could be protected there should be
+little difficulty with partridges.
+
+Pheasants are more individual in their ways, and act less together; but
+they have the same habit of running instead of flying, and if a poacher
+did but dare he could take them with nets as easily as possible. They
+form runs through the woods—just as fowls will wander day after day
+down a hedge, till they have made quite a path. So that, having found
+the run and knowing the position of the birds, the rest is simplicity
+itself. The net being stretched, the pheasants were driven in. A cur
+dog was sometimes sent round to disturb the birds. Being a cur, he did
+not bark, for which reason a strain of cur is preferred to this day by
+the mouchers who keep dogs. Now that the woods are regularly watched
+such a plan has become impracticable. It might indeed be done once, but
+surely not twice where competent keepers were about.
+
+Nets were also used for hares and rabbits, which were driven in by a
+dog; but, the scent of these animals being so good, it was necessary to
+work in such a manner that the wind might not blow from the net,
+meeting them as they approached it. Pheasants, as every one knows,
+roost on trees, but often do not ascend very high; and, indeed, before
+the leaves are off they are said to be sometimes taken by hand—sliding
+it along the bough till the legs are grasped, just as you might fowls
+perched at night on a rail across the beams of a shed.
+
+The spot where they roost is easily found out, because of the peculiar
+noise they make upon flying up; and with a little precaution the trees
+may be approached without startling them. Years ago the poacher carried
+a sulphur match and lit it under the tree, when the fumes, ascending,
+stupefied the birds, which fell to the ground. The process strongly
+resembled the way in which old-fashioned folk stifled their bees by
+placing the hive at night, when the insects were still, over a piece of
+brown paper dipped in molten brimstone and ignited. The apparently dead
+bees were afterwards shaken out and buried; but upon moving the earth
+with a spade some of them would crawl out, even after two or three
+days.
+
+Sulphur fumes were likewise used for compelling rabbits to bolt from
+their buries without a ferret. I tried an experiment in a bury once
+with a mixture the chief component of which was gunpowder, so managed
+as to burn slowly and give a great smoke. The rabbits did, indeed, just
+hop out and hop in again; but it is a most clumsy expedient, because
+the fire must be lit on the windward side, and the rabbits will only
+come out to leeward. The smoke hangs, and does not penetrate into half
+the tunnels; or else it blows through quickly, when you must stop half
+the holes with a spade. It is a wretched substitute for a ferret.
+
+When cock-fighting was common the bellicose inclinations of the
+cock-pheasants were sometimes excited to their destruction. A gamecock
+was first armed with the sharp spur made from the best razors, and then
+put down near where a pheasant-cock had been observed to crow. The
+pheasant cock is so thoroughly game that he will not allow any rival
+crowing in his locality, and the two quickly met in battle. Like a keen
+poniard the game-cock’s spur either slew the pheasant outright or got
+fixed in the pheasant’s feathers, when he was captured.
+
+A pheasant, too, as he ran deeper into the wood upon an alarm,
+occasionally found his neck in a noose suspended across his path. For
+rabbiting, the lurcher was and is the dog of all others. He is as
+cunning and wily in approaching his game as if he had a cross of feline
+nature in his character. Other dogs trust to speed; but the lurcher
+steals on his prey without a sound. He enters into the purpose of his
+master, and if any one appears in sight remains quietly in the hedge
+with the rabbit or leveret in his mouth till a sign bids him approach.
+If half the stories told of the docility and intelligence of the
+lurcher are true, the poacher needs no other help than one of these
+dogs for ground game. But the dogs called lurchers nowadays are mostly
+of degenerate and impure breed; still, even these are capable of a good
+deal.
+
+There is a way of fishing with rod and line, but without a bait. The
+rod should be in one piece, or else a stout one—the line also very
+strong and short, the hook of large size. When the fish is discovered
+the hook is quietly dropped into the water and allowed to float, in
+seeming, along, till close under it. The rod is then jerked up, and the
+barb enters the body of the fish and drags it out.
+
+This plan requires, of course, that the fish should be visible, and if
+stationary is more easily practised; but it is also effective even
+against small fish that swim together in large shoals, for if the hook
+misses one it strikes another. The most fatal time for fish is when
+they spawn: roach, jack, and trout alike are then within reach, and if
+the poacher dares to visit the water he is certain of a haul.
+
+Even in the present day and in the south a fawn is now and then stolen
+from parks and forests where deer are kept. Being small, it is not much
+more difficult to hide than a couple of hares; and once in the
+carrier’s cart and at a little distance no one asks any questions. Such
+game always finds a ready sale; and when a savoury dish is on the table
+those who are about to eat it do not inquire whence it came any more
+than the old folk did centuries ago. A nod and a wink are the best
+sauce. As the keepers are allowed to sell a certain number of fawns (or
+say they are), it is not possible for any one at a distance to know
+whether the game was poached or not. An ordinary single-barrel
+muzzle-loader of the commonest kind with a charge of common shot will
+kill a fawn.
+
+I once started to stalk a pheasant that was feeding in the corner of a
+meadow. Beyond the meadow there was a cornfield which extended across
+to a preserved wood. But the open stubble afforded no cover—any one
+walking in it could be seen—so that the pheasant had to be got at from
+one side only. It was necessary also that he should be shot dead
+without fluttering of wings, the wood being so near.
+
+The afternoon sun, shining in a cloudless sky—it was a still October
+day—beat hot against the western side of the hedge as I noiselessly
+walked beside it. In the aftermath, green but flowerless, a small flock
+of sheep were feeding—one with a long briar clinging to his wool. They
+moved slowly before me; a thing I wanted; for behind sheep almost any
+game can be approached.
+
+I have also frequently shot rabbits that were out feeding, by the aid
+of a herd of cows. It does not seem to be so much the actual cover as
+the scent of the animals; for a man of course can be seen over sheep,
+and under the legs of cattle. But the breath and odour of sheep or cows
+prevent the game from scenting him, and, what is equally effective, the
+cattle, to which they are accustomed, throw them off their guard.
+
+The cart-horses in the fields do not answer so well: if you try to use
+one for stalking, unless he knows you he will sheer off and set up a
+clumsy gallop, being afraid of capture and a return to work. But cows
+will feed steadily in front, and a flock of sheep, very slowly driven,
+move on with a gentle “tinkle, tinkle.” Wild creatures show no fear of
+what they are accustomed to, and the use of which they understand.
+
+If a solitary hurdle be set up in a meadow as a hiding-place from
+behind which to shoot the rabbits of a burrow, not one will come out
+within gun-shot that evening. They know-that it is something strange,
+the use of which they do not understand and therefore avoid. When I
+first began to shoot, the difficulty was to judge the distances, and to
+know how far a rabbit was from a favourite hiding-place. I once
+carefully dropped small green boughs, just broken off, at twenty,
+thirty, and forty yards, measuring by paces. This was in the morning.
+
+In the evening not a rabbit would come out anywhere near these boughs;
+they were shy of them even when the leaves had withered and turned
+brown; so that I took them away. Yet of the green boughs blown off by a
+gale, or the dead grey branches that fall of their own weight, they
+take no notice.
+
+First, then, they must have heard me in their burrows pacing by;
+secondly, they scented the boughs as having been handled, and connected
+the two circumstances together; and, thirdly, though aware that the
+boughs themselves were harmless, they felt that harm was intended. The
+pheasant had been walking about in the corner where the hedges met, but
+now he went in; still, as he entered the hedge in a quiet way, he did
+not appear to be alarmed. The sheep, tired of being constantly driven
+from their food, now sheered out from the hedge, and allowed me to go
+by.
+
+As I passed I gathered a few haws and ate them. The reason why birds do
+not care much for berries before they are forced to take to them by
+frost is because of the stone within, so that the food afforded by the
+berries is really small. Yew-berries are an exception; they have a
+stone, but the covering to it is sweet, succulent, and thick, and
+dearly loved by thrushes. In the ditch the tall grasses, having escaped
+the scythe, bowed low with the weight of their own awn-like seeds.
+
+The corner was not far off now; and I waited awhile behind a large
+hawthorn bush growing on the “shore” of the ditch, thinking that I
+might see the pheasant on the mound, or that at least he would recover
+confidence if he had previously heard anything. Inside the bush was a
+nest already partly filled with fallen leaves, like a little basket.
+
+A rabbit had been feeding on the other side, but now, suspicious, came
+over the bank, and, seeing me, suddenly stopped and lifted himself up.
+In that moment I could have shot him, being so near, without putting
+the gun to the shoulder, by the sense of direction in the hands; the
+next he dived into a burrow. Looking round the bush, I now saw the
+pheasant in the hedge, that crossed at right angles in front; this was
+fortunate, because through that hedge there was another meadow. It was
+full of nut-tree bushes, very tall and thick at the top, but lower down
+thin, as is usually the case when poles grow high. To fill the space a
+fence had been made of stakes and bushes woven between them, and on
+this the pheasant stood.
+
+It was too far for a safe shot; in a minute he went down into the
+meadow on the other side. I then crept on hands and knees towards the
+nut-bushes: as I got nearer there was a slight rustle and a low hiss in
+the grass, and I had to pause while a snake went by hastening for the
+ditch. A few moments afterwards, being close to the hedge, I rose
+partly up, and looked carefully over the fence between the hazel wands.
+There was the pheasant not fifteen yards away, his back somewhat
+towards me, and quietly questing about.
+
+In lifting the gun I had to push aside a bough—the empty hoods, from
+which a bunch of brown nuts had fallen, rested against the barrel as I
+looked along it. I aimed at the head—knowing that it would mean instant
+death, and would also avoid shattering the bird at so short a range;
+besides which there would be fewer scattered feathers to collect and
+thrust out of sight into a rabbit bury. A reason why people frequently
+miss pheasants in cover-shooting, despite of their size, is because
+they look at the body, the wings, and the tail. But if they looked only
+at the head, and thought of that, very few would escape. My finger felt
+the trigger, and the least increase of pressure would have been fatal;
+but in the act I hesitated, dropped the barrel, and watched the
+beautiful bird.
+
+That watching so often stayed the shot that at last it grew to be a
+habit: the mere simple pleasure of seeing birds and animals, when they
+were quite unconscious that they were observed, being too great to be
+spoilt by the discharge. After carefully getting a wire over a jack;
+after waiting in a tree till a hare came along; after sitting in a
+mound till the partridges began to run together to roost; in the end
+the wire or gun remained unused. The same feeling has equally checked
+my hand in legitimate shooting: time after time I have flushed
+partridges without firing, and have let the hare bound over the furrow
+free.
+
+I have entered many woods just for the pleasure of creeping through the
+brake and the thickets. Destruction in itself was not the motive; it
+was an overpowering instinct for woods and fields. Yet woods and fields
+lose half their interest without a gun—I like the power to shoot, even
+though I may not use it. The very perfection of our modern guns is to
+me one of their drawbacks: the use of them is so easy and so certain of
+effect that it takes away the romance of sport.
+
+There could be no greater pleasure to me than to wander with a
+matchlock through one of the great forests or wild tracts that still
+remain in England. A hare a day, a brace of partridges, or a wild duck
+would be ample in the way of actual shooting. The weapon itself,
+whether matchlock, wheel-lock, or even a cross-bow, would be a delight.
+Some of the antique wheel-lock guns are really beautiful specimens of
+design. The old powder-horns are often gems of workmanship—hunting
+scenes cut out in ivory, and the minutest detail of hoof or antler
+rendered with life-like accuracy. How pleasant these carvings feel to
+the fingers! It is delightful to handle such weapons and such
+implements.
+
+The matchlocks, too, are inlaid or the stocks carved. There is
+slaughter in every line of our modern guns—mechanical slaughter. But
+were I offered participation in the bloodiest battue ever arranged, or
+the freedom of an English forest or mountain tract, to go forth at any
+time untrammelled by attendant, but only to shoot with matchlock,
+wheel-lock, or cross-bow, my choice would be unhesitating.
+
+There would be pleasure in winding up the lock with the spanner;
+pleasure in adjusting the priming; or with the matchlock in lighting
+the match. To wander out into the brake, to creep from tree to tree so
+noiselessly that the woodpecker should not cease to tap—in that there
+is joy. The consciousness that everything depends upon your own
+personal skill, and that you have no second resource if that fails you,
+gives the real zest to sport.
+
+If the wheel did not knock a spark out quickly; if the priming had not
+been kept dry or the match not properly blown, or the cross-bow set
+exactly accurate, then the care of approach would be lost. You must
+hold the gun steady, too, while the slow priming ignites the charge.
+
+An imperfect weapon—yes; but the imperfect weapon would accord with the
+great oaks, the beech trees full of knot-holes, the mysterious
+thickets, the tall fern, the silence and the solitude. The chase would
+become a real chase: not, as now, a foregone conclusion. And there
+would be time for pondering and dreaming.
+
+Let us be always out of doors among trees and grass, and rain and wind
+and sun. There the breeze comes and strikes the cheek and sets it
+aglow: the gale increases and the trees creak and roar, but it is only
+a ruder music. A calm follows, the sun shines in the sky, and it is the
+time to sit under an oak, leaning against the bark, while the birds
+sing and the air is soft and sweet. By night the stars shine, and there
+is no fathoming the dark spaces between those brilliant points, nor the
+thoughts that come as it were between the fixed stars and landmarks of
+the mind.
+
+Or it is the morning on the hills, when hope is as wide as the world;
+or it is the evening on the shore. A red sun sinks, and the foam-tipped
+waves are crested with crimson; the booming surge breaks, and the spray
+flies afar, sprinkling the face watching under the pale cliffs. Let us
+get out of these indoor narrow modern days, whose twelve hours somehow
+have become shortened, into the sunlight and the pure wind. A something
+that the ancients called divine can be found and felt there still.
+
+THE END
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13730 ***