244 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
employed a man to wire rabbits. It soon was dis- 
covered that someone helped himself to the rabbits 
in the night. The man who told me the story lived 
in one part of a semi-detached cottage, and the 
farmer's rabbit-catcher in the other. Rabbits con- 
tinued to disappear, in spite of watching during the 
greater part of most nights. The matter became 
the absorbing topic of the two neighbours, who 
sometimes watched together. One night the rabbit- 
catcher wished to make a journey to a neighbouring 
village, and asked his neighbour to keep watch in 
his absence ; which he did, and took an extra couple 
of rabbits for his trouble. 
Once I had the satisfaction of seeing six men 
busy trying, by means of a line-ferret, to find a 
rabbit in a burrow I had emptied the day before. 
Unfortunately, the burrow was in the open, and 
only about fifty yards from a main road, and all the 
men escaped, running furiously towards the town. 
I willingly would have let them off if only they had 
waited to let me tell them how many rabbits I had 
got from that burrow the day before. One harvest- 
time I was watching the finish of the cutting of 
some wheat beyond my boundary. An old loafer 
appeared with a lurcher, annexed a leveret, and 
went off to the nearest pub. On his return, with a 
jar of beer, I showed myself, and he promptly came 
up and offered me a ‘wet.’ I asked him if he 
thought there were many hares about, and he said 
