DE\rF'S DODGES 193 



rejoinder of the keeper was, "Then it's the first rabbit I ever 

 see fly through the air ! " I reported it to Sir George Rose, and 

 asked leave to proceed against the tenant, but Sir George Rose 

 objected to my doing so; so because he gave me the shooting I 

 refrained. Soon after this Sir George resumed the shooting. 

 This tenant subsequently gave up the farm, and the next man 

 who took it was permitted to can-y a gun to frighten — they 

 very seldom kill — the rabbits; and as this farm adjoins my 

 pleasure grounds, and comes ^\ ithin a hundred and fifty yards of 

 my house, I well knew that, with no keeper over him, the new 

 tenant, if inclined so to do, would shoot at every head of tame 

 game I reared. I cared not how much he shot Sir George Rose's 

 partridges, for I thought that served his landlord right ; but I 

 was resolved to punish him if he came near my grounds. As I 

 expected, he used to live all his leisure hours under the hedge of 

 my little gorse cover, taking good care to keep his side of the 

 ditch, and when he thought no one was looking he fired into 

 the tame coveys of birds that fed at the di-a wing-room window 

 and from Mrs. Berkeley's hand. Many a shot he got at what 

 my keeper, James Dewy, now at Spetchley Park, called "a 

 guy " ; this was no other than a rabbit-skin rudely stuffed, and 

 set up on his land as if at feed. After crawling for some 

 hundred yards, he got a shot at this, and then Dewy would 

 rise from the gorse in peals of laughter, and cry out, " What ! 

 not killed 'un yet .'' Dang it, I never heard tell of so stout a 

 rabbut." One year the crop was beans, and, while the man in 

 chai-ge of them hoed on one way. Dewy crept out the other and 

 set up the guy for the labourer to see when he came back : as 

 he expected, the man saw the rabbit, and down he went on 

 hands and knees till he had come within reach, when he got up 

 and broke his hoe over the " stout 'un." Dewy, as usual, was 

 there to laugh immoderately, saying, " What ! you ha'nt done 

 for him yet, then .'' Your master has wasted many charges of 

 powder and shot at that poor thing, and now thou hast broken 

 thy hoe." The labourer himself laughed immoderately at the 

 imposition and quaintness of Dewy. At last this tenant, at 



