258 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN. 



clulo-ing in the needless but wholesome exercise of 

 rowing, looked odd, and Lord Stuart De Rothesay 

 and myself had some difficulty in obtaining the re- 

 mission of his sentence, but, by undertaking that he 

 Avould never risk offending again. Hooper was re- 

 stored to freedom. This and the foilure of wild-fowl 

 made him apply to me to teach him, with my men, 

 the preservation of game. I did so, and from that 

 hour over a period of many years, Hooper never 

 had but two masters. He lived first near South- 

 ampton, as Sir Edward Butler's head keeper; and, 

 when he gave up the manors he rented, Hooper then 

 went, at my recommendation, as head keeper to 

 the late Sir John Guest ; he is still at Canford, and I 

 do not believe that a better or more trustworthy man 

 exists. One more anecdote of Hooper, and then to 

 other matters. A lugger having rafted a lot of tubs, 

 and the preventive man on duty for a short space 

 been deemed safe, Hooper and another man were left 

 on the raft ; the former, who was a strong swimmer, 

 to carry a guide-line on shore, to which the heavier 

 rope Avas attached, by which again the raft was to be 

 liawled in. The tubs being unshipped, and thus left 

 afloat, the lugger again stood out to sea. Either the 

 tide had not been exactly counted on, or the distance 

 to the shore was mistaken, for, on Hooper's slipping 

 into the water and making for the land, long before 

 he attained shoal water he found himself " pulled up," 

 as sailors say, " with a round turn," and, like a fish on 

 a hook, tugging away with his teeth to no purpose. In 

 despair, for he knew that the moments he was now 

 losing were worth much, he had nothing left for it 

 but to swim back to the raft, and in five minutes after- 

 wards a preventive man appeared on the cliff, his glass 



