244 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 



employed a man to wire rabbits. It soon was dis- 

 covered that someone helped himself to the rabbits 

 in the night. The man who told me the story lived 

 in one part of a semi-detached cottage, and the 

 farmer's rabbit-catcher in the other. Rabbits con- 

 tinued to disappear, in spite of watching during the 

 greater part of most nights. The matter became 

 the absorbing topic of the two neighbours, who 

 sometimes watched together. One night the rabbit- 

 catcher wished to make a journey to a neighbouring 

 village, and asked his neighbour to keep watch in 

 his absence ; which he did, and took an extra couple 

 of rabbits for his trouble. 



Once I had the satisfaction of seeing six men 

 busy trying, by means of a line-ferret, to find a 

 rabbit in a burrow I had emptied the day before. 

 Unfortunately, the burrow was in the open, and 

 only about fifty yards from a main road, and all the 

 men escaped, running furiously towards the town. 

 I willingly would have let them off if only they had 

 waited to let me tell them how many rabbits I had 

 got from that burrow the day before. One harvest- 

 time I was watching the finish of the cutting of 

 some wheat beyond my boundary. An old loafer 

 appeared with a lurcher, annexed a leveret, and 

 went off to the nearest pub. On his return, with a 

 jar of beer, I showed myself, and he promptly came 

 up and offered me a ' wet.' I asked him if he 

 thought there were many hares about, and he said 



