370 WILD SPAIN. 



he and his son marched off prisoners to our main party — 

 an ill-looking ruffian clad in deer-skins, of whom some 

 ugly tales were told. Brought before our friend represent- 

 ing the proprietary, the captive showed an undaunted and 

 even impudent demeanour, asserting that it was the 

 hunger of his children that had brought him from a village 

 on the Guadiana (some fifty miles away), to kill the deer, 

 which, he said, belonged to him equally with any other of 

 Ood's creatures. Such primitive principles availed but 

 little with these fierce keepers, imbued with almost feudal 

 respect for forest-game, and this bold adherent of " com- 

 monwealth " was deprived of his gun and ordered off to 

 the coast, with a warning that he would shortly have to 

 answer for his conduct before the magistrate at Almonte. 

 As he turned to obey, old Bartolo, whose estimate of the 

 terrors of Spanish law evidently stood low, shouted after 

 him, with a significant tap on the stock of his ancient 

 escopeta, "Look here, Cristobal ! you have given us a deal 

 of trouble ; you will come here once too often ! " 



It may occur to the reader to conjecture how the poacher 

 could have utilized his deer, had he secured one, in so 

 remote a spot. Far away on the distant boundary of the 

 Coto, he had his donkey hidden in some thicket of len- 

 tiscus, and under cover of night would have returned for his 

 spoils, and moving stage by stage to the sea-shore, would 

 contrive to reach his village before daybreak. He was, how- 

 ever, securely caught, for within an hour another keeper 

 arrived, who also had detected the trespasser's footprints 

 at a point some ten miles away, and suspecting they were 

 none of honest man, had followed the trail. Thus, even 

 had Cristobal not been captured by us, he would still have 

 been intercepted by this second adversary. 



