192 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



this, and told him to call on me and my keepers to aid and 

 assist. I offered also to take the brother of the man if the 

 warrant for him was given me, but this the magistrate declined ; 

 so we only took the man against whom I had the charge of 

 poaching. His brother was by, but did not interfere; our 

 prisoner, as he very soon was, used a sharp-pointed carving-knife 

 to defend himself, and resisted as much as he could, till he got 

 a broken head, and that settled the affair. This all happened 

 in the afternoon of the day on which the poaching act was com- 

 mitted, when, as we were taking our prisoner away, his mother 

 said he couldn't go without his hat ; she ran in and fetched it, 

 and as she turned it up to put it on his head, he being in hand- 

 cuffs, the snipe fell out of the lining that I had seen him shoot 

 in the morning. This and a few other captures soon settled 

 the question as to who was to be master of the land I shot 

 over ; though on the fifth of November the men of the little 

 village by Beacon Lodge, known then by the name of " Slop 

 Pond," blackened their faces, dressed up three figures to repre- 

 sent me, my gamekeeper, and butler, and beat and then burnt 

 them in a bonfire on the high road. I was not at home at the 

 time, or, as the fire was in an illegal situation, in all probability 

 I should have danced a war -dance by the light of it. All 

 hostility at last subsided. Mr. Clark and his associates, on a 

 second conviction which I gained against him, left the place, 

 and many of those men who burnt me in effigy would now do 

 the same by any one else if they thought it pleased me. They 

 come to me for advice in all local disputes, and to write letters 

 for them ; and they behave so well that they can have from me 

 game or a couple of rabbits whenever they ask for it. I soon 

 found I could deal with the country people very well : it was 

 some of what are called the middling and upper classes who 

 continued to misconduct themselves. For instance, the tenant 

 of Chewton Farm, under Sir George Rose, who was permitted 

 to kill rabbits with a gun, would persist in firing at partridges ; 

 and, having been caught by my keeper, Target, in the fact, when 

 on the spot, insisted he had shot at a rabbit. The quaint 



