296 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
shooting. On the first of September he would say 
to his keeper, ‘I have been your master for the last 
seven months; now you must be mine.’ 
For growls and grumbles and prodigious feasts of 
appetite, a keepers’ and earth-stoppers’ feast would 
take a deal of beating. The atmosphere reeks of 
foxes and pheasants, and beer and baccy. A certain 
keeper was notorious for the justice which he did to 
the feast. After eating an amazing quantity of all 
sorts of roast and boiled meat, potatoes, greens, 
haricot beans, dried peas, plum-pudding, cucumber, 
and cheese, he would say, ‘ Now let’s have a radish 
just to top up with,’ and then would think nothing 
of clearing a whole dish of the most prosperous- 
looking roots. This reminds me of a stopping- 
feast incident concerning an old fellow who was a 
sort of cross between a shepherd and a keeper, and 
wore very loud corduroy trousers on Sundays and 
feast-days. The dinner was over, and the usual 
speeches and health-drinkings were well under 
way, when the old chap, who had far to walk, 
stood up and said to the chairman, ‘I thinks it be 
time you an’ me kiss’d and said good-bye.’ 
One of the greatest sorrows that can overtake a 
keeper is to be prevented by illness from being 
present at an important shoot. This happened to 
me only once, when I was knocked off my legs by 
influenza the evening before a ‘combined’ partridge 
drive; so it did not matter so much as it might 
