88 A GAMEKEEPER'S NOTE-BOOK 



For the keeper the days and nights spent in his 

 rearing -fields pass in incessant anxiety. He never 



counts his pheasants before they are hatched. 

 From^ He may count them as morsels of fluff; 

 Larder when they begin to use their babyish wings ; 



again when they fill the broad ride with 

 a mass of seething brown but not until the 

 bracken is dead, and the trees are naked, and the game- 

 cart has borne away its burden, does he count them 

 as his own. Nor does his anxiety cease until the 

 long tails hang safely in his larder. 



" They be a good lot of eggs," the keeper will inform 

 you as he reveals his store, ready to be given to the 

 quickening warmth of broody fowls. "I 

 don't know as ever I set eyes on better," 

 and he will add, " and I don't expect you have 

 Mothers ne ^ ner -" ^ vou denied this he would 

 not believe you. His pheasants' eggs are 

 like the apple blossoms : each year more beautiful 

 than ever. And the more plentiful the more 

 beautiful. Noting the keeper, as he goes out in 

 search of broody hens, you might mistake him for 

 a dealer in rags and bones. He tramps all round 

 the countryside with an old sack slung over his back 

 one of the light, thin kind in which dog-biscuits 

 come ; or sometimes he drives in a gig, and poultry - 

 farmers welcome him gladly. He pays half a crown 

 or three shillings for each hen in broody mood, 



