TRESPASSERS AND POACHERS 239 
himself. Seeing that gipsies will gorge themselves 
on a ewe that has died in the lambing season, it is 
not to be wondered at that they relish sitting part- 
ridges and pheasants. Once I saved a sitting 
pheasant from two gipsy lurchers rather luckily, and 
just in the nick of time. I was going along a broad 
green roadside, where lay some hedge-trimmings, 
when I ‘ketch’d eye on’ the bird on her nest, and 
almost at the same moment saw a gipsy caravan 
coming round a bend of the road—two lurchers all 
over the place. I knocked out a full pipe of good 
shag nearly on top of the pheasant; went on un- 
concernedly, then turned back, and walked behind 
the gipsies, which had the effect of keeping them 
more or less on the road. The lurchers went within 
a yard of that pheasant without scenting her, and 
luckily without seeing her. Next day she hatched 
off every egg. 
A cunning old labourer gave himself away to me 
during my first spring on some strange ground. He 
confided to me how, on his way to work, he had 
found a fine clutch of partridge eggs on someone 
else’s ground, and suggested that it would be just as 
well if it were arranged that they should hatch on 
my ground. It was very thoughtful of him. Another 
time, a rough-looking man, called ‘Old Jack,’ was 
working with a gang cutting and stripping (barking) 
oaks in my neighbour's woods. Meeting ‘ Old Jack’ 
one afternoon, when he had been to fetch some beer 
