HARES AND RABBITS 139 
dictatorial, possibly because, like the centurion of 
old, they have many men under them. However, I 
managed, after sticking to my guns, to work with 
several bailiffs in peace and quietness and pleasure. 
Here is a story of how a keeper of many rabbits got 
the better of a bailiff. The bailiff, whose sheep 
were many but turnips few, had lodged a complaint 
with the employer. The keeper found out the 
day appointed for inspecting the turnips. Snow lay 
on the ground, and there were rabbits’ tracks near 
every turnip. So the keeper went stealthily the 
night before, after the shepherd had gone home, 
and let out the sheep. The bailiffs case not 
only fell to the ground, but he was admonished 
to see that in the future the sheep were better 
secured. 
It is a common habit of those who manage farms, 
when the sowing of corn or roots is going on, to 
neglect the tillage of a headland adjoining a wood, 
and after the crop has struggled up thinly to use 
that part as a road. They then attribute the com- 
parative failure of the crop in that part of the field 
to rabbits, which, likely enough, do not exist. In 
my greener days a farmer tried to make out that 
the two or three rabbits in my wood had cleared 
a field of wheat. I told him he knew there never 
had been a decent plant of wheat, which, as luck 
would have it, was much thicker along the edge of 
the wood than anywhere else. This, I suggested, 
