18 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
sorts of cranes—the implement for lifting and the 
bird—I concluded that he meant by a crane a 
heron. He went on to describe how his crane ran 
out of a manure-heap. I became very much in- 
terested. After a deal of cross-examining, during 
which the old chap showed some irritation at my 
pardonable scepticism, I got out of him that his 
crane was a weasel, or ‘ wizzel,’ as Hampshire folks 
say. (I did not then know that weasels and stoats 
in some localities are called cranes.) 
Here is an account of how old B., the ‘ brother- 
in-law,’ relieved me of responsibility in the matter 
of a poaching cat. Poaching cats were included, 
with gipsies, among the things he ‘couldn’t a-bear 
nohow.’ The excursions of a large black cat belong- 
ing to a cluster of cottages (precisely to which one 
I preferred not to find out) had attracted my atten- 
tion; so I decided to set a trap in a likely hedge, 
which, in fact, proved to be more than likely, for 
while I was struggling to get a peg into the stony 
bank, I saw black Thomas a quarter of a mile away, 
apparently prowling up the hedge. To shorten this 
cat’s history, I was making my way along the 
hedge betimes next morning when I saw someone 
coming from the opposite direction. A few more 
yards, and he would reach my trap. I took cover, 
knowing that if the cat was caught, and the man did 
not let it out of the trap, he was certain to let it out 
of the bag, which was worse. Here was a pretty 
