BEATERS AND STOPS 223 
her that her place was by a gate at a certain corner 
of a certain wood, and that she was to go straight 
there, and stay there, till the beaters came just 
before lunch-time to take the beat near which she 
would be standing. I asked her whether she quite 
understood, and offered to send someone to put her 
in position. She broke into such a torrent of 
scornful remarks, to the effect that if she did not 
know the gate after being about so many years, she 
‘didn’t know nothin’... Well, on this old dame 
depended the success of the final beat of the wood. 
I had expected to find eighty toa hundred pheasants 
in that beat: there were only a score. Nor did I 
see any more of the woman till after lunch, when 
we had gone to another covert, half a mile away. 
She calmly told me that she thought it ‘didn’t make 
much odds where she went so long as she didn’t get 
shot.’ Once two very small boys, holding each other 
by the hand, came to me the evening before a shoot 
and said, ‘ Please, keeper, do you want any more 
shooters ?” 
Beaters’ strikes are not unknown. Of course, if 
your beaters are town wastrels, who never have done 
any beating before, and expect to stroll about 
casually for an hour or so armed with a silver- 
topped cane, to feed on truffles stewed in champagne, 
and to receive the bulk of the bag in addition to the 
pay of a music-hall star, then you may expect any- 
thing. But when there is a strike among genuine 
