THE POACHER'S HAUNT 149 



the direction of the barn whither Mr. Magenis had proceeded ; 

 but word reached me that the bird then had flown. While my 

 keeper and the prisoner sat by the fire the keeper suddenly 

 seized the leg of the murderer, and looking at his shoe ex- 

 claimed, " Ha ! why these are not the shoes I tracked in the 

 ride when Coles was shot." " No," replied the man ; " I had on 

 my others." 



It had come to my ears that a person, driving the double 

 trade of a tinker and public-house keeper at Carleton, was 

 implicated, and I had searched his house ; there were pheasants' 

 feathers in the loft, but nothing else that I could discover : the 

 man himself, they said, was away on business. On the afternoon 

 on which the death of Coles was reported to me I thought I 

 would search that house again ; when I rode up to the door it 

 was nearly dark. On opening the door signs of a general " flit " 

 were evident. Cupboards were open and empty, things were 

 packed, and no one to be seen. On proceeding into a low back 

 kitchen, there sat four men, none of whom in that dim light I 

 recognised. They had been drinking and smoking. The instant 

 I entered one of them rose and left the house, and his person, as 

 he walked out, was familiar to me ; having peered under the 

 slouched hats and into the faces of the other three, — they were 

 strangers, and anything but of prepossessing appearance, — I 

 asked them what they were doing there ? They replied, " Keep- 

 ing possession for the landlord." " What ! " I said, " is he off'.^ " 

 " Gone," they replied, " on business." There were several things 

 packed for removal in that apartment, when, to my great delight, 

 I saw in the chimney corner two diminutive single-barrel guns, 

 of the use of which I had long been aware. They were made up 

 by the landlord and tinker for night shooting in the Harrold 

 Woods, so small that, in a wind and in the midst of the roar of 

 the woods in a rough night, their report could not be heard at 

 a hundred yards' distance, and, when on such nights the phea- 

 sants roosted low, the seven or eight shot they carried did not 

 destroy them for sale. I have these guns still in my possession. 

 The instant I saw these much-wished-for engines, which, to the 



