THE WOODCRAFT OF GIPSIES 215 



If a policeman is on duty during the early days of 

 partridge shooting, he will manage to fall in with 

 shooting parties ; then he makes it known that he 

 heard shots, and was impelled to take a look round, 

 44 to see that there weren't nothing wrong." The 

 policeman's favourite time for making known his 

 presence is soon after the bagging of a good, broad- 

 backed hare. Even policemen become spoiled with 

 favours. On a sportsman telling his keeper to give 

 a hare to a polite and zealous officer of the law, 

 44 Excuse me, sir," said he, 44 but the party over the 

 hedge have just given me a hare, so might I have a 

 brace of birds ? Thank ye kindly, I'm sure ; a hare 

 will do nicely next time, sir." The sporting police- 

 man can do much to help the luckless sportsman. 



Gipsies and gamekeepers have enough in common 

 to make them deadly foes. They share an intimate 



knowledge of the ways of wild creatures. 

 The They are skilled trackers and crafty trappers, 



eraff of ^ ne y are hedgerow men ; born to the 

 Gipsies hedgerow, trained to know the meaning of 



every hole, and hollow, and run. Their eyes 

 read the story of the hedge as the scholar's the printed 

 page ; hedge-lore is their second nature, and it is as 

 though an instinct tells them where the partridge 

 has built, where the hedgehog has buried himself, 

 or where the rabbits are crouching. In their know- 

 ledge of the ways of rabbits and hares keepers and 



