A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 233 



thinly veiled the professional poacher, were the main- 

 stay of the Club. Both were fine players of the 

 dashing sort. Jethro, the elder, had some rudiments 

 of civility ; Fred (commonly anagrammatised into 

 Derf or Derfy) was an unmitigated ruffian, who played 

 tricks in the field like a vicious monkey, and rarely 

 got through a match without fighting a backer of the 

 opposing side. Both the brothers were constantly 

 in trouble : more than once Petty Sessions have lost 

 Buckfield the game. Once when Jethro was bowling 

 to me in the annual match at Arnington, I turned 

 after playing the ball, and found the bowler had 

 vanished from the crease and was running hard for 

 the nearest wood, pursued by a man who had 

 emerged suddenly from the pavilion with a writ. 

 And it was Jethro and Fred who once came over to 

 the Arnington cricket dinner, and had to be taken 

 home in a conveyance. The charge for this con- 

 venience appeared in the Club's accounts at the 

 General Meeting, and with a friendly understanding 

 that it should not form a precedent, was duly passed. 

 Nowadays Jethro is respected and a little feared as 

 an umpire ; Frederick is definitely on the parish ; 

 and there is no longer need to include a boxer in an 

 eleven visiting Buckfield. 



