"TRESPASSERS" 119 



an hour later we were loitering in a quiet lane with 

 open fields around us when a large body of men 

 armed with stout sticks appeared breaking through 

 the hedges with the proverbial contempt born of 

 familiarity. Captained by scarlet-vested keepers, 

 they were distributed in a great circle so as to 

 enclose several large fields, retrievers fine, black, 

 docile brutes sitting at heel with a dignity that 

 distinguished them from those in charge of them. 



Just outside this circle, and using a powerful glass, 

 I commanded the field more thoroughly than those 

 within it. Several hares had been enclosed in the 

 circle, as yet too large to cause them alarm. In the 

 central fields were the guns, five of them, as I learned 

 upon enquiry. They were engaged in killing off the 

 cock pheasants and finishing up the hares. 



Immediately a hare is started in one of the outer 

 fields. He makes off toward the central one and, 

 finding it apparently empty, slackens speed. Then 

 comes the first shot, and he bounds forward 

 undeceived ; a second follows, and so on down the 

 whole battery, hearing which I recognise the ill- 

 regulated volley that has been hammering the 

 coverts during the earlier portion of the day. Still 

 unhit, the now terrified creature enters an adjoining 

 field, cuts across, making as it probaby feels for some 

 refuge beyond. But the great circle has begun to 

 close in all round, other hares have been started 

 across that fatal central field, and the sound of the 

 guns is ever behind the first fugitive as it speeds 

 ahead. Upon entering the outmost field, however, 

 it sights the ring of men. From all sides at once 

 comes the strange whinnying laughter of these 



