y bidding all his
mates "go it again, my merry boys, and never mind if they you taaeke." He
told me that on several occasions he was out ferreting, or with his
lurcher, on the next night after coming out of prison. Can you keep such
a fellow out of a well-stocked park? He likes the money that he gets for
game, but what he likes far better is the wild pleasure of seeing the
deadly dogs wind on the trail of the doomed quarry; he likes the danger,
the strategy, the gambling chances.

One night I got this old man to drive me about for some hours. He is a
smart hand with horses, and when I said, "Can you manage without lamps
in this dark?"--he answered, "I could find my way for twenty miles round
here if you tie my eyes up. There's nary gate that my nets hasn't been
under; there's hardly a field that I haven't been chased on." As our
trotter swung on, I found that the poacher associated almost every gate
and outhouse and copse with some wild story. For example, we passed a
clump of farm-buildings, and the poacher said; "I had a queer job in
there. Three of us had had a good night--a dozen hares--and we got
half-a-crown apiece for them, so we drank all day, and came out on the
game again at night. We put down a master lot o' wires about eleven, and
then we takes a bottle o' rum and goes to lie down on a load of hay.
Well, we all takes too much, and sleeps on and on. When I wakes, Lord,
we was covered with snow, and a marcy we was alive. We dursn't go for
our wires in the daylight, and there we has to stand and see a keeper go
and take out three hares, one after another. It was a fortnight before I
had a chance of picking up the wires again, and we was about perished."
Cold, wet, and all other inconveniences are nothing to the poacher.

Presently my man chuckled grimly. "Had a near shave over there where you
see them ar' trees. I had my old dorg out one night, and two commarades
along with me. We did werra well at that gate we just passed, so we
tries another field. Do you think that there owd dorg 'ud go in? Not he.
There never was such a one for 'cuteness. We was all in our poachin'
clothes, faces blacked, women's nightcaps on, and shirts on over our
coats. Well, the light come in the sky, and I separates from my mates,
for I sees the owd dorg put up a hare and coorse her. I follows him, and
he gits up for first turn; then puss begins to turn very quick to throw
the dorg out before she made her last run to cover. He was on t