240 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 



for his mates, and, apparently, had taken the oppor- 

 tunity to replenish his own boiler, I asked him if the 

 pheasants were laying well where he was working. 

 Assuming a very confidential tone, he told me that 

 he and his mates had found 'a smartish few eggs,' 

 and that he would be glad to bring me down ' some 

 jest about nice nestes,' for he 6 didn't think much as 

 how they'd get e'er a bob up yonder.' A man, who 

 gave up the business after stealing his share of eggs 

 without once being caught, let it become known that 

 he stored the eggs beneath the floor of his wood- 

 shed, whence his aged father would come and fetch 

 them and pass them on. In a case in which a large 

 number of eggs were stolen, it turned out that, by 

 favour of an innocent coachman, many of them were 

 shipped to a town in the carriage of the very man 

 from whose ground chiefly they were taken. 



The most honest egg-poachers I ever met were 

 a lady and gentleman who had taken a house in 

 the country, but did not know overmuch about 

 rural matters. I chanced to show them some 

 pheasant eggs, when they exclaimed, ' Oh, are those 

 pheasant eggs ?' Then they told me how, one day 

 out for a cycle ride, they had seen, while walking 

 up a hill, ten similar eggs in a hollow of the hedge- 

 bank ; and how they had taken the eggs home, left 

 them lying about, and finally, not knowing what 

 they were, had flung them on the dust-heap. This 

 sort of thing is amusing, but very annoying to a 



