220 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 



occurred when I was helping a neighbouring 

 keeper. During the last beat I came up some 

 way behind the beaters, and saw a legged rabbit 

 stowed behind a stump just in from the road by 

 which some of the men would go home after 

 being paid. While I was telling the keeper that 

 I could not find the pheasant that had dropped 

 back, I gave him a game-card, ostensibly contain- 

 ing particulars of the bag, but in fact informing 

 him of the hidden rabbit. The keeper, after 

 paying the beaters on the spot, suggested that 

 they might like a rabbit a-piece ; and there being, 

 of course, no refusal, he put aside nineteen rabbits 

 for the twenty beaters. Quickly enough came an 

 intimation that there was one ' shark' * So there 

 is,' the keeper replied ; ' but there's one already 

 legged behind yonder stump, and whoever put it 

 there may go and fetch it, or go without.' 



How many beaters, I wonder, have made a pot 

 of beer out of purloined cartridges ? A case came 

 under my notice of a man who was a sort of cross 

 between a beater and a keeper ; he was also the 

 father of a large family, and believed in beer. He 

 had quite a stock of cartridges, which he offered for 

 sale at three-and-ninepence a hundred. I discovered 

 one beater's little game quite unexpectedly ; in 

 fact, I never had the least suspicion of him before 

 he gave himself away. He was telling me how he 

 had shot something stone-dead at seventy yard 



