350 The Poacher. 



party joined them. He rightly guessed that the keepers would 

 come down in a body to the guns, and if they could only get a 

 quarter of an hour or twenty minutes' good shooting, his stratagem 

 was to leave off and retreat quickly upon the netting party, so that, 

 in case of an attack, the forces would not be divided. And it was 

 even possible that the keepers would remain searching the wood 

 where they had heard the firing, and in this case they would escape 

 with all their booty, and without bloodshed. It was a very near thing, 

 and, had the keepers come up five minutes later, the poachers 

 might have escaped. They had got clear of the wood, and were 

 keeping well under the hedgerows out of sight ; but the crashing of 

 a dead fence as they sprang over it caught the quick ear of Johnson, 

 and he halloaed his men on like a pack of fox-hounds. But they 

 were more blown than the poachers, and although when they once 

 got on the trail they never left it, the poachers reached the wood 

 more than five minutes in advance. As soon as they got safe into 

 the wood, a long bat low whistle warned them where their com- 

 rades were standing ; and in a few minutes more the whole party 

 were drawn up under the old oak, breathlessly waiting the coming 

 of the keepers. Johnson was pretty certain that the poachers had 

 entered the wood, but he did not exactly know where. The old 

 oak was perhaps five hundred yards in the depth of the forest, and 

 as the poachers stood as mute and silent as statues beneath its 

 shades, the keepers were completely at fault. Had the poachers 

 been content to carry with them a part of the hares and rabbits 

 which they had already secured, and silently retreated, in all proba- 

 bility they would have got clear off ; but they wished to save their 

 nets, which were worth ten or fifteen pounds, and they stood still, 

 thinking that the keepers might overlook them in the gloom of the 

 forest. Blue lights and rockets were not, I think, invented then 

 at least I never heard of our keepers using them ; but what I most 

 wondered at was, that not one even carried a dark lantern in his 

 pocket. Johnson was fairly puzzled. He dared not divide his men, 

 for he knew the poachers were strong, although not aware of their 

 actual numbers, and he thought it worse than useless to try to follow 



