360 The Poacher, 



We have now done with Mr. Wilham Hammerton j and probably 

 the reader is by this quite as tired of him as myself. 



The gang was now completely broken up, and we rarely after 

 this heard of any very serious affrays between the keepers and 

 poachers in our woods ; but a very lawless set still existed among 

 our villagers, who had always been noted as the worst characters in 

 the county, and they took to a new trade, that of sheep-stealing. 

 Bat we soon put a stopper on this game. However little the far- 

 mers might care when they heard that every pheasant had been 

 cleared oif in such a wood, or on such a night, they did not much 

 like to hear, morning after morning, that Farmer Smith, or old 

 Roberts up at the Lodge, had lost another sheep on the previous 

 night ; and as the sheep-stealers began to get more daring, a consulta- 

 tion was held as to what was best to be done. Now, the English 

 farmers take some rousing, but when once fairly roused, they gene- 

 rally prove themselves men of action and decision. So an associa- 

 tion was formed at once, about fifty members were enrolled from 

 our village and those in the neighbourhood, nearly a hundred pounds 

 were subscribed, and one fine morning a man (a London dealer) 

 walked up to Mr. Jack Russell's lodge, leading a brace of perhaps 

 the handsomest black-and-tan bloodhounds that were ever seen. In 

 the afternoon, a long-winded, lathy young fellow, who got his living 

 by rat-catching, was started with a drag (a sheep's head), with in- 

 structions to run it through two villages next to ours, come back, 

 and walk into our beershop, and there sit till the hounds came up. 

 We gave him two hours' law, and then laid the hounds on. It was 

 a treat to see them hit off his scent frcm the farmyard. The scent 

 was a hot one, and they followed him yard for yard, but in couples, 

 through all his doublings and dodgings j and he had scarcely been 

 seated in the beershop half-an-hour, before the deep bay of the 

 hounds, as they dashed up to the door, told us that he was there. 



The little beershop, as usual, was filled with poachers and sheep- 

 stealers, and great was their astonishment when the door burst open, 

 and the dealer led the two hounds in, coupled up ; and greater still 

 when the rat-catcher, who had jumped up on to the table, threw 



