2o8 The Gamekeeper at Home. 



their boundaries ; now they have ferreted a bank to* 

 which they have no right. Another time they have 

 prevented straying pheasants from returning to the 

 covers by intercepting their retreat ; and a score of 

 similar tricks. Or perhaps it is the master of a pack 

 of hounds against whom insinuations are directed : 

 cubs are not destroyed sufficiently, and the pheasants 

 are eaten daily. 



Sometimes it is a tenant-farmer with a long lease, 

 who cannot be quickly ejected, who has to bear the 

 brunt of these attacks. He is accused of trapping 

 hares and rabbits : he sets the traps so close to the 

 preserves that the pheasants are frequently caught 

 and mortally injured ; he is suspected of laying- 

 poisoned grain about. Not content with this he 

 carries his malice so far as to cause the grass or 

 other crops in which outlying nests or young broods 

 are sheltered to be cut before it is ripe, with the object 

 of destroying or driving them away ; and he presents 

 the mowers whose scythes mutilate game with a quart 

 of beer as reward, or furnishes his shepherds with 

 lurchers for poaching. He encourages the gipsies to 

 encamp in the neighbourhood and carry on nightly 

 expeditions by allowing them the use of a field in 

 which to put their vans and horses. With such ac- 

 counts as these, supported by what looks like evidence, 



