70 The Amateur Poacher 



snow, I came across a ' gip ' family sitting o'n the ground 

 in a lane, old and young exposed to the blast. In 

 that there was nothing remarkable, but I recollect it 

 because the young mother, handsome in the style of 

 her race, had her neck and brown bust quite bare, 

 and the white snowflakes drove thickly aslant upon 

 her. Their complexion looks more dusky in winter, 

 so that the contrast of the colours made me wish 

 for an artist to paint it. And he might have put the 

 grey embers of a fire gone out, and the twisted stem 

 of a hawthorn bush with red haws above. 



A mile beyond the gipsy tents we entered among 

 the copses : scattered ash plantations, and hazel 

 thickets with narrow green tracks between. Further 

 in the nut-tree bushes were more numerous, and we 

 became separated though within call. Presently a 

 low whistle like the peewit's (our signal) called me to 

 Orion. On the border of a thicket, near an open 

 field of swedes, he had found a hare in a wire. It 

 was a beauty the soft fur smooth to stroke, not so 

 much as a shot-hole in the black-marked ears. Wired 

 or netted hares and rabbits are much preferred by 

 the dealers to those that have been shot and so, too, 

 netted partridges because they look so clean and 

 tempt the purchaser. The blacksmith Ikey, who 

 bought our rabbits, used to sew up the shot wounds 



