CHAPTER XIV 



" To thee, both day and night must bring some traces 

 Of joys or sorrows shared in other places." 



' ' Indeed, dear Doe, thou say'st the words of truth. 

 All nature is with reminiscence rife, 

 Scents from the flower's sigh the scenes of youth, 

 Each distant bell's a chime from early life. 

 In perfume, as in music, mingled joy and pain, 

 From the long past awake, and rule the mind again." 



The Last of the New Forest Deer, an unpublished Poem. 



G. F. B. 



HAVING obtained the Royal leave to shoot over the New Forest, 

 with the sport at my command over my own beat, coupled with 

 the kindness of my friends, I was at no loss for amusement. 

 The licence over the forest is in writing, and plainly restrictive 

 in certain things ; for instance, to shoot the grey-hen or hen- 

 pheasant is strictly prohibited, and the person possessing the 

 licence is given to understand that the Crown expects him to 

 use its gift in moderation, as an occasional recreation, and not 

 to make the royal waste a scene of continuous slaughter, or gain 

 by sale of the game therein killed. I had not long had the 

 licence, or become acquainted with the habits of some of those 

 who possessed it, before I was suspicious as to considerable abuses. 

 In the first place the keepers, with very few exceptions, never 

 took the trouble to ascertain, when they heard a gun, who it 

 was that fired it : this I observed in my own case, for unless I 

 happened to cross a keeper, he never purposely came to see who 

 I was. In the second, I observed that if I took a turf or furze 

 cutter from the vicinity of the forest, as my beater in thick 



