CHAPTER IX 



' e Now was the game destroyed, and not a hare 

 Escaped at least the danger of the snare ; 

 Woods of their feather'd beauty were bereft, 

 The beauteous victims of the silent theft : 

 The well-known shops received a large supply, 

 That they who could not kill at least might buy." CBABBE. 



THERE are sporting trophies hanging up now in my dressing- 

 room to which I will allude, as some of the circumstances under 

 which they were won are curious. In the seven years I was at 

 Harrold I had got up a great deal of game, and of course the 

 game I reared spread to other woods, to the Harrold Woods, 

 over which Mr. Magenis shot, and elsewhere. The Harrold 

 Woods were the property of Lord de Grey. There is no country, 

 wherever there is land unpreserved, that has not its quota of 

 poachers or thieves of game ; and as there were several tracts of 

 land both belonging to Lord de Grey and to Mr. Alston, to 

 which every night-shooter was free, of course there were plenty 

 of poachers in the vicinity of Harrold Hall. It is not the well- 

 preserved head of game that makes the poacher, or the idle and 

 bad character ; but it is an unprotected district of land, whereon 

 there is a natural or indigenous head of game, to which any one 

 is free who likes to take it. Young men thus obtain the means 

 of pleasurably earning a few shillings to spend in drink and 

 debauchery ; and when they have imbibed a taste for it, and the 

 little unprotected game is nearly exterminated, then they follow 

 up their propensity on sites where it is more plentiful. The 

 game-stealers of whom I am about to speak were reared, as far 



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