ting the cornfields of the level grounds below,
found it difficult to pass the water. For besides the marsh itself, the
mere, and the brook, another slow, stagnant stream, quite choked with
sedges and flags, uncut for years, ran into it, or rather joined it, and
before doing so meandered along the very foot of the hill-side over
which the woods grew. To a hare or a rabbit, therefore, there was but
one path or exit without taking to the water in this direction for
nearly a mile, and that was across this narrow raised causeway. The
pheasants frequently used it, as if preferring to walk than to fly.
Partridges came too, to seat themselves in the dry dust--a thing they do
daily in warm weather.

Hares were constantly passing from the cornfields to the wood, and the
wood to the cornfields; and they had another reason for using this
track, because so many herbs and plants, whose leaves they like better
than grass, flourished at the sides of the hedges. No scythe cuts them
down, as it does by the hedges in the meadows; nor was a man sent round
with a reaping hook to chop them off, as is often done round the arable
fields. There was, therefore, always a feast here, to which, also, the
rabbits came.

The poachers were perfectly well aware of all this, and as a consequence
this narrow lane became a most favourite haunt of theirs. A wire set in
the runs that led to the causeway, or in the causeway itself, was almost
certain to be thrown. At one time it was occasionally netted; and now
and then a bolder fellow hid himself in the bushes with a gun, and took
his choice of pheasant, partridge, hare, or rabbit. These practices were
possible, because although so secluded, there was a public right-of-way
along the lane.

But of recent years, as game became more valued and the keepers were
increased, a check was put upon it, though even now wires are frequently
found which poachers have been obliged to abandon. They are loth to give
up a place that has a kind of poaching reputation. As if in revenge for
the interference, they have so ransacked the marsh every spring for the
eggs of the waterfowl that the wild duck will not lay there, but seek
spots safer from such enemies. The marsh is left to the coots and
moorhens that from thence stock the brooks.

CHAPTER X

FARMER WILLUM'S PLACE: SNIPE SHOOTING

One October morning towards the end of the month, Orion and I started to
beat over Redcote Farm upon the standing invit