GEORGE GILL 233 



was a convenient opportunity for disposing of 

 them otherwise. Sometimes, they overflowed even 

 the sanctuary of the tithe-barn, and were stowed in 

 the sanctum sanctorum of the church belfry. 



Kingsley used to remark that a good game- 

 keeper was often a poacher turned outside in, just 

 as a successful poacher was often a gamekeeper 

 turned inside out. Old George Treviss had been 

 a keen smuggler, and, I do not doubt, a keen 

 poacher also in his day, but he was certainly not, in 

 his advanced life, a keen gamekeeper. " Look at 

 old George," said the hardly less aged head game- 

 keeper, George Gill, to me one day a man who 

 had all the shrewd native wit and humour, in real 

 life, of one of Mr Thomas Hardy's best characters 

 in fiction when, as we were beating Knighton 

 Heath Wood for game, he turned round and saw, 

 not for the first time, his next in command, lagging 

 well behind the line of beaters, and leaning heavily 

 against a tree, "look at George a- straightening 

 the trees, as he has a-been all day." George Gill 

 was himself a remarkable man, in every sense of 

 the word. He was bailiff, head keeper, and head 

 labourer all in one, to the squire of the village, Mr 

 John Floyer, who was, for many years, Member of 

 Parliament for the County of Dorset, and a man 



