58 AN ENGLISH SQUIRE 



who seldom except of a Sunday have a look at the 

 noonday sun ; with their chances of being crushed, or 

 imprisoned alive, or scorched and stifled in an explosion of 

 choke-damp, and the certainty of having to breathe in 

 foul air at a suffocating temperature, while hewing and 

 picking with unnatural contortions. Or with the fate 

 of the Sheffield cutler, or the Manchester cotton-spinner, 

 or the Spitalfields silk-weaver ; or even with that of the 

 men whose occupations are not absolutely unhealthy, 

 but who have to huddle up their families in a small 

 room or two in some crowded court, and who are 

 almost driven to drink as an antidote to the noxious 

 atmosphere. If the keeper does not live near the black 

 countries or some great manufacturing town, where the 

 poachers go abroad in gangs and do not shrink from 

 bloodshed on occasion, the worst hardship he has to put 

 up with is a healthy midnight walk to see that all is 

 right in the covers, with the possibility, perhaps, of a 

 chase and a round at single-stick should he chance to 

 come across some trespasser. He is paid for taking the 

 pleasures that cost his employer dear, and on the whole 

 he has a greater variety of amusement. For he rarely 

 goes on his rounds without his gun, ready to knock 

 over a hawk, or a magpie, or a hooded crow, or to 

 take a snap-shot at a stoat or a weasel. He has never 

 been taught that trapping may be cruel, and we are 

 sorry to think it would be next to impossible to 

 persuade him of it ; and, cruelty apart, it must be 

 confessed that there is a good deal of interest in 

 circumventing the different wild animals, whose in- 



