220 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
occurred when I was helping a_ neighbouring 
keeper. During the last beat I came up some 
way behind the beaters, and saw a legged rabbit 
stowed behind a stump just in from the road by 
which some of the men would go home after 
being paid. While I was telling the keeper that 
I could not find the pheasant that had dropped 
back, I gave him a game-card, ostensibly contain- 
ing particulars of the bag, but in fact informing 
him of the hidden rabbit. The keeper, after 
paying the beaters on the spot, suggested that 
they might like a rabbit a-piece; and there being, 
of course, no refusal, he put aside nineteen rabbits 
for the twenty beaters. Quickly enough came an 
intimation that there was one ‘shart.’ ‘So there 
is, the keeper replied; ‘but there’s one already 
legged behind yonder stump, and whoever put it 
there may go and fetch it, or go without.’ 
How many beaters, I wonder, have made a pot 
of beer out of purloined cartridges? A case came 
under my notice of a man who was a sort of cross 
between a beater and a keeper; he was also the 
father of a large family, and believed in beer. He 
had quite a stock of cartridges, which he offered for 
sale at three-and-ninepence a hundred. I discovered 
one beater’s little game quite unexpectedly; in 
fact, I never had the least suspicion of him before 
he gave himself away. He was telling me how he 
had shot something stone-dead at seventy yards, 
