Fines Paid by Subscription, 197 



occasion — just one, not more — he got himself most 

 thoroughly thrashed by a pair of hulking fellows. 



' Some keepers,' he says, i are always summoning 

 people, but it don't do no good. What's the use of 

 summoning a chap for sneaking about with a cur dog 

 and a wire in his pocket ? His mates in the village 

 clubs together and pays his fine, and he laughs at you. 

 Why, down in the town there them mechanic chaps 

 have got a regular society to pay these here fines for 

 trespass, and the bench they claps it on strong on 

 purpose. But it ain't no good ; they forks out the tin, 

 and then goes and haves a spree at a public. Besides 

 which, if I can help it I don't much care to send a man 

 to gaol — this, of course, is between you and me — 

 unless he uses his gun. If he uses his gun there ain't 

 nothing too bad for him. But these here prisons — 

 every man as ever I knowed go to gaol always went 

 twice, and kept on going. There ain't nothing in the 

 world like a good ground- ash stick. When you gives 

 a chap a sound dressing with that there article, he 

 never shows his face in your wood no more. There's 

 fields about here where them mechanics gees as 

 regular as Saturday comes to try their dogs, as they 

 calls it — and a precious lot of dogs they keeps among 

 'em. But they never does it on this estate : they knows 

 my habits, you see. There's less summonses goes up 



