240 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
for his mates, and, apparently, had taken the oppor- 
tunity to replenish his own boiler, I asked him if the 
pheasants were laying well where he was working. 
Assuming a very confidential tone, he told me that 
he and his mates had found ‘a smartish few eggs,’ 
and that he would be glad to bring me down ‘some 
jest about nice nestes,’ for he ‘ didn’t think much as 
how they’d get e’er a bob up yonder.’ A man, who 
gave up the business after stealing his share of eggs 
without once being caught, let it become known that 
he stored the eggs beneath the floor of his wood- 
shed, whence his aged father would come and fetch 
them and pass them on. Ina case in which a large 
number of eggs were stolen, it turned out that, by 
favour of an innocent coachman, many of them were 
shipped to a town in the carriage of the very man 
from whose ground chiefly they were taken. 
The most honest egg-poachers I ever met were 
a lady and gentleman who had taken a house in 
the country, but did not know overmuch about 
rural matters. I chanced to show them some 
pheasant eggs, when they exclaimed, ‘ Oh, are those 
pheasant eggs? Then they told me how, one day 
out for a cycle ride, they had seen, while walking 
up a hill, ten similar eggs in a hollow of the hedge- 
bank ; and how they had taken the eggs home, left 
them lying about, and finally, not knowing what 
they were, had flung them on the dust-heap. This 
sort of thing is amusing, but very annoying to a 
