1 1 8 1 he Amateur Poacher. 



gent as bought him have it warm : we harried his 

 pheasants and killed the most of 'em. 



' After^that I come home, and took to it regular. 

 It ain't no use unless you do it regular. If a man 

 goes out into the fields now and then chance-like he 

 don't get much, and is most sure to be caught very 

 likely in the place of somebody else the keepers were 

 waiting for and as didn't come. I goes to work every 

 day the same as the rest, only I always take piece-work, 

 which I can come to when I fancy, and stay as late 

 in the evening as suits me with a good excuse. As I 

 knows navigating, I do a main bit of draining and 

 water-furrowing, and I gets good wages all the year 

 round, and never wants for a job. You see, I knows 

 more than the fellows as have never been at nothing 

 but plough. 



' The reason I gets on so well poaching is because 

 I'm always at work out in the fields, except when I 

 goes with the van. I watches everything as goes on, 

 and marks the hares' tracks and the rabbit buries, and 

 the double mounds and little copses as the pheasants 

 wanders off to in the autumn. I keeps a 'nation good 

 look out after the keeper and his men, and sees their 

 dodges which way they walks, and how they comes 

 back sudden and unexpected on purpose. There's 

 mostly one about with his eyes on me when they 



