POACHING. 119 



CHAPTER XVH. 



Gamekeeper Game Preserves Eccleston, a pretty village The School 

 House Draining Children Playing The River-side Walk Pleas- 

 ure Parties A Contrasting Glimpse of a Sad Heart Saturday Night 

 Ballad Singer Mendicants Row in the Tap-room Woman's Fee- 

 bleness Chester Beer, and Beer-drinking. 



HHHE gamekeeper advised us to return to Chester by another 

 *- road, and following his directions, we found a delightful path 

 by the river side. We had not gone far before we overtook an- 

 other keeper, carrying a gun. It is hard for us to look upon wild 

 game as property, and it seemed as if the temptation to poach 

 upon it must be often irresistible to a poor man. It must have a 

 bad effect upon the moral character of a community for the law 

 to deal with any man as a criminal for an act which, in his own 

 conscience, is not deemed sinful. Even this keeper seemed to 

 look upon poaching as not at all wrong merely a trial of adroit- 

 ness between the poacher and himself, though it was plain that 

 detection would place the poacher among common swindlers and 

 thieves, exclude him from the society of the religious, and from 

 reputable employment, and make the future support of life by 

 unlawful means almost a necessity. He said, however, there 

 was very little poaching in the neighborhood. Most of the 

 farmers were allowed to shoot within certain limits, and the 



