86 FACT AGAINST FICTION. 



children. He looks on the cash so earned as 

 pocket-mone}^, to be spent in the public-house 

 in gambling and drinking, and a portion of 

 what he has thus to eat is given to the lurcher, 

 to keep the dog in running condition. I com- 

 menced this work by a promise to illustrate my 

 book by facts, and I now offer one to my readers 

 that came immediately within my own know- 

 ledge, in support of the miserable and heartless 

 depravity as so correctly charged against the 

 village poacher. 



My custom having invariably been to give the 

 little in my power to bestow to some poor person 

 or j)ersons, if they deserved it, in the dead of 

 winter, or at the approach of Christmas, on one 

 occasion I selected three families from the mud 

 huts near me, to whom resj^ectively to assign a 

 dinner for the wives and children. The families 

 consisted of a mother and five children, a mother 

 and three children, and a mother with two, and 

 to these three families I intended to give beef 

 and plum -pudding, &c., according to their number 

 and ages. To this end, the women were warned 

 to come for what I had to give. On being 

 warned, one of them came to me as spokes- 



