The Rabbit Battue. 235 



by the road side which he fancied was out of the way of the keepers, 

 and, after one double shot, popping up again into his dog-cart, and 

 driving on a little distance before he repeated the trick), thus: 

 "Somebody told me the other day, that he saw a dog-cart very 

 like Mr. Simpson's drive down the lane over Tillmyre j but I said, 

 ' It's no matter if it was him : he's too much of a gentleman ever 

 to meddle with our game after his lordship has given me such strict 

 orders always to invite him whenever we have a good day's 

 rabbiting.' " 



These little bits of flattery saved Mr. Johnson many a hare and 

 partridge. He had, as it were, touched our honour. We were 

 under an obligation to him for a nice day or two's sport, and there 

 would have been something very mean if we had requited his 

 generosity by killing his game. 



But civil as he was with us, with the daring poacher it was die 

 fortiter in re and nothing else j and no keeper in our county had 

 consigned more of this class to the county gaol than Mr. Johnson. 



By eight A.M. on the Saturday morning I was at Mr. Johnson's 

 lodge, and found that a goodly company had already arrived there 

 before me. It was a beautiful hunting morning, and every one of 

 my readers knows, without my telling him, what sort of a morning 

 that is in the middle of February in England -, and the more the 

 weather was like hunting, the better it always used to be for our 

 rabbit battues. 



Jovial wer^ the greetings, as I gave my pony into Joe's hands a 

 lathy under-keeper, who was standing outside the door bare-headed 

 (not, however, out of compliment to me), to meet me and walked 

 into the lodge, which was now filled with game-keepers, farmers 

 (many of them in top-boots, by the way), and one or two of the 

 neighbouring gentlemen, who, according to Mr. Johnson's phrase- 

 ology, were "of the right sort, and capital shots." Great was the 

 Babel ; half a score men talking, eating, laughing, and drinking at 

 once. It was a sort of standing breakfast. There was plenty to 

 cut at -j every one helped himself, and ate it how he liked. It was, 

 as we used to say in the olden days at Lord's Ground, when we 



