TRESPASSERS AND POACHERS 239 



himself. Seeing that gipsies will gorge themselves 

 on a ewe that has died in the lambing season, it is 

 not to be wondered at that they relish sitting part- 

 ridges and pheasants. Once I saved a sitting 

 pheasant from two gipsy lurchers rather luckily, and 

 just in the nick of time. I was going along a broad 

 green roadside, where lay some hedge-trimmings, 

 when I ' ketch'd eye on ' the bird on her nest, and 

 almost at the same moment saw a gipsy caravan 

 coming round a bend of the road two lurchers all 

 over the place. I knocked out a full pipe of good 

 shag nearly on top of the pheasant ; went on un- 

 concernedly, then turned back, and walked behind 

 the gipsies, which had the effect of keeping them 

 more or less on the road. The lurchers went within 

 a yard of that pheasant without scenting her, and 

 luckily without seeing her. Next day she hatched 

 off every egg. 



A cunning old labourer gave himself away to me 

 during my first spring on some strange ground. He 

 confided to me how, on his way to work, he had 

 found a fine clutch of partridge eggs on someone 

 else's ground, and suggested that it would be just as 

 well if it were arranged that they should hatch on 

 my ground. It was very thoughtful of him. Another 

 time, a rough-looking man, called ' Old Jack,' was 

 working with a gang cutting and stripping (barking) 

 oaks in my neighbour's woods. Meeting * Old Jack ' 

 one afternoon, when he had been to fetch some beer 



