THE OGRE OF THE POOL AND SANDY 



" The missus do hanker after a rabbit-pie. I wish 

 ye'd come along some evenin' and shoot a couple or so, 

 sir. Ye might have a try to catch the great old trout 

 in Boulder Pool same time. Though I'd lay a soverin' 

 to a hayseed he wouldn't give ye a touch even," said 

 Farmer Perry as we sat discussing a matutinal horn of 

 " October " in the worthy yeoman's quaintly pictur- 

 esque homestead under the Kentish hills. 



" But there must be plenty of young ones suckling," 

 was my objection to the farmer's suggestion. It does 

 not seem " cricket " to shoot rabbits in June, despite 

 that delightfully unsportsmanlike medley of injustice, the 

 Ground Game Act, which permits — nay, encourages— 

 the killing of rabbits and hares all the year round, in 

 season and out of season. But Farmer Perry so im- 

 pressed upon me the fact that his better-half was " wholly 

 bent upon havin' a rabbit-pie " that a compromise was 

 arrived at, namely, I was to shoot only such rabbits as 

 were three-parts grown with a -250 rifle. 



The bunnies inhabited a steep, sandy bank and disused 

 sandpit on the outskirts of a small covert, while a modest 

 but rapid stream, which, like the brook immortalised 

 by Tennyson, harbours " here and there a lusty 

 trout," flanked the warren and ran, twisting, chattering 

 and babbling over pebbles and boulders, stickles and 

 deeps, to join its mother-river, the Medway. The banks 

 of the stream were fringed with belts of sallow and 



