130 The Gamekeeper at Home. 



this bird with coming evil ; and I have heard the 

 women working in the fields remark that such and 

 such a farmer then lying ill would not recover, for a 

 crow had been seen to fly over his house but just 

 above the roof-tree. 



Trespassers give him a good deal of trouble, for 

 a great wood seems to have an irresistible attraction 

 for all sorts of semi-Bohemians, besides those who 

 come for poaching purposes. The keeper thinks it 

 much more difficult to watch a wood like this, which 

 is continuous and all in one, than it is to guard a 

 number of detached plantations, though in the 

 aggregate they may cover an equal area. It is 

 impossible to see into it any distance ; to walk round 

 it is a task of time. A poacher may slink from 

 tree to tree and from thicket to thicket, and, unless 

 the dogs chance to sniff him out, may lie hidden in 

 tangled masses of fern and bramble, while the keeper 

 passes not ten yards away. But plantations laid out 

 in regular order with broad open spaces, sometimes 

 with small fields between, do not afford anything 

 like cover for human beings. If a man is concealed 

 in one of these copses, and finds that the keeper or 

 his assistants are about to go through it, he must move 

 or be caught ; and in moving he has to pass across 

 an open space, and is nearly sure to be detected. 



