THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FAEM. 73 



a hollow beech tree, within which escreened we direct 

 our glass upon his movements at easy rifle range. I 

 would not have had his feelings for something, so 

 guiltily restless were his glance and movements. At 

 last we fancy we can distinctly observe him setting a 

 snare in our fence, although he stands upon a neigh- 

 bour's ground. No — he has been watching someone 

 on tiptoe. Now, what does he ? He is busy twisting a 

 hazel rod, with an astonishing amount of handiness 

 and exertion for so old a craftsman. Then he steals on 

 — Ha, ha ! we see ; and we are out of our sentry box 

 and across the meadow before he turns, to be aghast : 

 just caught in time before he could commit himself by 

 appropriating a load of newly stacked cord-wood beside 

 some trees that have been felled. I didn't envy him 

 his feelings on the occasion, nor did I spare my threats, 

 to his iu finite consternation. "By goby, him be cotched 

 well," observed our plethoric friend the gardener, in 

 confidence to the missus; "him's not a going to be 

 searching maister's ground again in a hurry." 



This reminds me of a clever mode of arresting three 

 poachers single-handed, which I learnt from an old 

 friend, a distinguished county chief-constable, a sports- 

 man also of the first water, to whose harriers I used to 

 whip-in as a lad in the holidays, on those wild North 

 Welsh darling hills, with their miles of turf-gallop, 

 interrupted only by just jolly low stone walls and dykes 

 — now, alas ! being gradually enclosed for cultivation. 

 At once seize the nearest, and handcuff him around a 

 sapling. The others will run — catch the first, slit down 

 his trousers before and behind with your knife, and cut 

 off his braces ; then make after the third, whom, if 

 reached, handcuff also to embrace a sapling oak. You 



