THE MASTER'S EXPENSES 125 



occasion, and history does not say whether the account 

 was ever paid in full. 



To avoid such impostures, it should be clearly under- 

 stood throughout the length and breadth of the country 

 what should be paid for and what overlooked. If there 

 is any reasonable proof that an attempt, albeit feeble, 

 has been made to shut the fowls in, and that the offend- 

 ing fox has scratched in under the door, such a claim 

 should, particularly if the claimant is poor and makes 

 a living out of the poultry, be paid at once and without 

 demur. I never countenanced paying a gentleman's 

 servants. In the first place, the poultry belongs in all 

 probability to the Master, who would hardly want to be 

 paid at all ; secondly, in the case of a keeper, he would 

 be sure to lay all possible blame on the fox, and charge 

 the Hunt with the price of a few old broody hens. 

 That it is annoying in the extreme to lose fowls, par- 

 ticularly if they are valuable, hardly admits of denial ; 

 but those who keep prize poultry should take the 

 trouble to shut the birds out of harm's way. 



Wire. — A still greater difficulty of the modern Master 

 is the question of barbed wire. That device seems 

 nowadays to grow in countries which we all remember 

 quite free from it. The secretary of the wire fund in 

 the big flying countries is generally a man of great 

 energy, and has at his beck and call an army of 

 labourers ready at all times to go to any part of the 

 country and pull down the wire, carefully coiling it 

 and stacking it somewhere handy, so that they can put 

 their hands on it again at the end of the season and put 

 it up again. This, if done systematically and well, 



