THE FISH-POACHER. 129 
poachers’ houses, though only for a short period, 
when about to be used. At this time the police 
have found them secreted in the chimney, between 
a bed and the mattress, or even wound about 
the portly persons of the poachers’ wives. The 
women are not always simply aiders and abettors, 
but in poaching sometimes play a more important 
vole. They have frequently been taken red- 
handed by the watchers. The vocation of these 
latter is a hard one. They work at night, and 
require to be most on the alert during rough and 
wet weather—in the winter, when the fish are 
spawning. Sometimes they must remain still for 
hours in freezing clothes; and in summer they 
not unfrequently lie all night in dank and wet 
herbage. They see the night side of nature, and 
many of them are fairly good naturalists, If a lap- 
wing gets up and screams in the darkness they know 
how to interpret the sound, as also a hare rushing 
wildly past. It must be confessed, however, that 
at all points the fish-poacher is cleverer and of 
readier wit than the river-watcher. 
