TRESPASSERS. 135 



wood that springs up between the ash stoles. Although 

 constantly out of doors — if such a phrase be allowable — 

 foxes seem to dislike cold and draught, as do weasels and 

 all their kind, notably ferrets. But for pure game pre- 

 serving, and for convenience of watching, the keeper thinks 

 the detached plantations of fir preferable. Doubtless he 

 is professionally right ; and yet somehow a great wood 

 seems infinitely more English and appeals to the heart far 

 more powerfully, with its noble oaks and beeches and ash 

 trees, its bramble-thickets and brake, and endless beauties, 

 which a life of study will not exhaust. 



But the semi-Bohemians detested by the keeper do 

 not prowl about the confines of a wood with artistic views ; 

 their objects are extremely prosaic, and though not always 

 precisely injurious, yet they annoy him beyond endurance. 

 He is like a spider in the centre of a vast spreading web, 

 and the instant the most outlying threads — in this case 

 represented by fences — are broken he is all agitation till 

 he has expelled the intruder. Men and boys in the 

 winter come stealing into the wood where the blackthorn 

 thickets are for sloes, which are reputed to be improved 

 by the first frosts, and are used for making sloe gin, etc. 

 Those they gather they sell, of course ; and although the 

 pursuit may be perfectly harmless in itself, how is the 

 keeper to be certain that, if opportunity offered, these 

 gentry would not pounce upon a rabbit or anything else .'' 

 Others come for the dead wood ; and it does on the face 



