72 THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FARM. 



on finding a fat sheep missing from his fold. Suspicion 

 pointed, and the police managed with difficulty to 

 circumvent the stronghold, where they found, not the 

 lost mutton, but two whole cartloads of stolen pro- 

 perty — wool, wheat, tools, oats, barley, sacks, &c., — a 

 hoard that must have been accumulating for months, if 

 not years. We ourselves lost, last year, during the hay 

 harvest, when all hands were busy at a distance, a 

 mountain wether and a ewe that were fattening for 

 home consumption on the field just opposite this depre- 

 dator's den, to which at the time we vainly sought a 

 clue. That hill-side, so lovely in the sight of the 

 tourist, with its hanging, ivied, castellated rocks, where 

 the jackdaw and the hawk tribe haunt its soft brown 

 beech coppice and nut covert, is unhappily dotted over 

 with the small freehold cottages and garden plots of 

 " squatters," a most lawless set, that are the terror of 

 all respectable people within reach. These "forest" 

 fellows are up to anything, from banding to poach 

 pheasants, to burning down the buildings of any 

 gentleman who may object and dare to convict them. 

 Only this afternoon I observed in the distance an old 

 fellow in a smock, sitting on a rail where he should not 

 have been, and not sleeping very sound either. I at 

 once took up my glass and read distinctly off every 

 lineament of his precious countenance, as it changed 

 under the evident quick workings of a not over-com- 

 fortable conscience. At last, clearly deeming it to be 

 all serene, he slipped stealthily off, and along under 

 cover of a hedge between hira and the house, stopping 

 ever and anon as if to examine a snare. Ourselves, we 

 slip down too upon the lawn, and along an orchard 

 slope, and through the chestnut avenue, until we attain 



