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diarism, about which he had been first to give the alarm. 

 * But what were you doing in the wood ? ' asked the 

 lawyer. ' I was following my vocation,' he replied so 

 simply that the very judge smiled. The late Captain 

 Craven, of Brockhampton Park, used to tell a story 

 illustrating in the same way a frankness that might 

 easily be mistaken for ' cheek.' A notorious poacher, 

 who had been the plague of the estate for a long time, 

 disappeared, and was not seen for months, till one day 

 he accosted Captain Craven in Cheltenham, but he 

 scarcely was recognisable, gaol and hospital and disease 

 had so changed and oldened him before his time. 

 The odd plea which he advanced for requiring help 

 was that he could not ' carry on the old trade, being too 

 bad with the rheumatics to lie out noiv.' ' I told him 

 he was a damned scoundrel, and gave him half a 

 crown,' was invariably the close of the narrative. 



But by far the most amusing poacher I ever knew 

 lived in a little Northumbrian village, where his doings 

 still are talked of as if they had occurred only yester- 

 day. Once he fell very ill, and, greatly to his surprise, 

 for he never went to church, discovered a great friend 

 in the parson, soup, wine, chicken, and all sorts of 

 delicacies being sent him. In process of time he 

 recovered, and very soon appeared at the door of the 

 clergyman's house, asking to see him. Being shown 

 into the library, he began to fumble in the huge bag- 

 like pocket of his coat, and eventually flinging down 

 two brace of partridges and a pheasant, he exclaimed, 



