Oby and his System. 119 



sees me working on a farm they puts a man special 

 to look after me. I never does nothing close round 

 where I'm at work, so he waits about a main bit for 

 nothing. 



' You see by going out piece-work I visits every 

 farm in the parish. The other men they works for 

 one farmer for two or three or maybe twenty years ; 

 but I goes very nigh all round the place a fortnight 

 here and a week there, and then a month somewhere 

 else. So I knows every hare in the parish, and all 

 his runs and all the double mounds and copses, and 

 the little covers in the corners of the fields. When I 

 be at work on one place I sets my wires about half 

 a mile away on a farm as I ain't been working on for 

 a month, and where the keeper don't keep no special 

 look out now I be gone. As I goes all round, I knows 

 the ways of all the farmers, and them as bides out 

 late at night at their friends' and they as goes to bed 

 early ; and so I knows what paths to follow and what 

 fields I can walk about in and never meet nobody. 



* The dodge is to be always in the fields and to 

 know everybody's ways. Then you may do just as 

 you be a-mind. All of 'em knows I be a-poaching ; 

 but that don't make no difference for work ; I can 

 use my tools, and do it as well as any man in the 

 country, and they be glad to get me on for 'em. 



