Lowries Gap 167 



common gang, has been one of the most active and 

 persistent offenders. 



A realistic novelist would paint a most heartrend- 

 ing picture of this same poacher. He lives in a den 

 you cannot call it a room whose only furniture is a 

 three-legged stool, a crazy table, and a big iron pot. 

 He has not lain in a bed since childhood, but in 

 summer he sleeps at an old dyke-back in a thick 

 plantation, and in winter at any bieldy corner. If it 

 be extremely cold he keeps himself warm by standing 

 against the hot walls of the gas-works of the little 

 town that numbers him as an inhabitant. As to 

 clothet, he has none in particular. ' What do you do 

 when you get wet ? ' I asked him ; and ' Just wait 

 till I'm dry again/ was his reply. Yet the old ruffian 

 (he is over sixty) has never had a touch of rheu- 

 matism or a day's illness in his life. For his diet, it 

 may not be described without offence to ears fastidious. 

 ' Then,' you think, ' his poaching can come to very 

 little ? ' But it is not that. Doubtless he sells his 

 game dirt cheap ; but, if he had a spark of the saving 

 instinct, he would be better off than any skilled 

 labourer. His is a case of lightly come, lightly go of 

 coming by the fife and departing by the drum. Once, 

 by unexampled luck, he came to be lord and master 

 of a five-pound note one Christmas Eve ; he at once 

 exchanged it for a cask of whisky, and on New Year's 

 Day he was comparatively sober, and had not a drop 

 to call his own. Again, it is said that for three con- 



