OF THE HARBOURER. 6i 



day when any tyro could have done the work ; but 

 most of the keepers were quite incompetent to over- 

 come the difficulties which are so frequently met 

 with. Another thing was that they were not 

 sufficiently independent of local opinion. People, 

 even farmers who might be expected to know, are 

 always loath to believe that stags inhabit one set of 

 woods at one season and another set at another 

 season, and that because a stag has lain undisturbed 

 in a covert all July he may not be there in August. 

 A general shift of quarters invariably takes place 

 when the corn is cut. It frequently happened that 

 deer were reported as having done damage, a meet 

 was fixed, and all the village was on the tiptoe of 

 expectation ; but the keeper failed to harbour the 

 stag. He dared not report " no stag " and send the 

 hounds on somewhere else to try, so he reported that 

 he could not exactly "harbour" him that morning, 

 that he had been there two days " agone," and prob- 

 ably had not come out to feed, that he was sure he 

 was there, and so on, with the result that, the Master 

 yielding to local pressure, a day was practically 

 wasted. Had he done otherwise than he did, the 

 keeper's life would not have been worth living in the 

 parish for the next month. The professional har- 

 bourer is under no such pressure, he makes up his 

 mind at once and sticks to it, jumps on his pony and 

 gallops off to the next likely covert and has some- 

 thing harboured for the pack to hunt by the time 

 they reach the meet. 



