1 68 Autumn 



secutive months he has been known to live save for 

 one poor twopenny loaf exclusively on liquor. He 

 is so free-handed, that if you gave him the run of a 

 whole Mansion House Fund, it would be all the same 

 in a week. Yet ( miserable ' and ' wretched ' are the 

 last terms you could ticket his life with. There are 

 few indeed into whose hours so much of happiness is 

 crowded. If he be ever gloomy, it is only when he is 

 hungry or athirst. Let him fill his belly, and he is 

 himself again. Nor is he destitute of a certain love 

 of Nature : ' Man, it was fine to hear the wind soughin' 

 amang the trees again,' he said, after his last spell in 

 gaol. But he cannot read ; he has neither friends nor 

 belongings ; therefore, he knows nothing of care or 

 thought or conscience. A laughing temperament has 

 made him master of his fate. 



The last time I saw him was in October on a 

 moonlight night. I was out late on a lonely bridle- 

 path across a flat Northumbrian moor ; stopping at 

 a sort of No-Man's-Land to note the midnight beauty 

 of the broad, long range of the Cheviots, the mighty 

 shadows, and the deep valleys, I was aware of a 

 glimmer of fire through a dark plantation. I marched 

 up, and there was my poacher gazing into the red 

 embers of a wood fire, crooning an amatorious ditty 

 and watching a roughly spitted rabbit as it roasted. 

 ' Now, lads, run in on him,' I cried, as I had been 

 a keeper directing his assistants. The old man 

 flourished a stout cudgel ; but on second thoughts he 



