CAPTURE OF THE FELONS. 331 



charge unless they cleared themselves by staimg all 

 they knew of the transaction. 



On reaching home I directly sent for a vigilant con- 

 stable of police, and he started the same evening or 

 the next morning, I forget which, and elicited such 

 evidence from the plate-layers that he took into cus- 

 tody the little man who carried the stolen deer, and 

 who was but recently discharged from gaol, having 

 undergone punishment for stealing a gun. The next 

 morning another constable captured an accomplice 

 who had aided in the theft, a man who had been 

 previously fined for a savage assault, in company with 

 four or five others, on Bromfield, one of the marks- 

 men of the forest, whom they had beaten and left for 

 dead. These fellows were committed to Winchester 

 to await their trial, and were afterwards convicted 

 in two months with hard labour. 



Now this is perhaps the most extraordinary in- 

 stance of sagacity in that wonderful animal the dog 

 ever related. Tramp had never run the scent of a 

 deer, nor the scent of a man, and yet out of three or 

 four lines of scent, the men all strange to him, and 

 all more or less blooded or tainted with the deer, he 

 distinguished the man who carried her, although not 

 a drop of fresh blood fell to direct him, as the thieves 

 took the precaution to tie up the head and throat 

 before they removed her. The check where the lines 

 of scent crossed each other showed that the various 

 footsteps occasioned a difiiculty ; and also the one at 

 the railway wires before he carried the trail over the 

 line, that check too was accounted for. The thief had 

 put the deer down there, while he ran to the plate- 

 layers and bought a promise of silence from them by 

 saying that they should have a share of the spoil. 

 AVhen Tramp showed an inclination to run down the 



