“The dodge is always to be in the fields and to know everybody’s ways. Then you may do just as you be a-mind. All of ’em knows I be a-poaching; but that don’t make no difference for work; I can use my tools, and do it as well as any man in the country, and they be glad to get me on for ’em. They farmers as have got their shooting be sharper than the keepers, and you can’t do much there; but they as haven’t got the shooting don’t take no notice. They sees my wires in the grass, and just looks the other way. If they sees I with a gun I puts un in ditch till they be gone by, and they don’t look among the nettles.
“Some of them as got land by the wood would like I to be there all day and night. You see, their clover and corn feeds the hares and pheasants; and then some day when they goes into the market and passes the poultry-shop there be four or five score pheasants a-hanging up with their long tails a-sweeping in the faces of them as fed ’em. The same with the hares and the rabbits; and so they’d just as soon as I had ’em—and a dalled deal sooner—out of spite. Lord bless you! if I was to walk through their courtyards at night with a sack over my shoulders full of you knows what, and met one of ’em, he’d tell his dog to stop that yowling, and go in doors rather than see me. As for the rabbits, they hates they worse than poison. They knocks a hare over now and then themselves on the quiet—bless you! I could tell tales on a main few, but I bean’t such a fellow as that.
“But, you see I don’t run no risk except from the keeper hisself, the men as helps un, and two or three lickspittles as be always messing round after a ferreting job or some wood-cutting, and the Christmas charities. It be enough to make a man sick to see they. This yer parish be a very big un, and a be preserved very high, and I can do three times as much in he as in the next un, as ain’t much preserved. So I sticks to this un.
“Of course they tried to drive I out of un, and wanted the cottage; but granny had all the receipts for the quit-rent, and my lard and all the lawyers couldn’t shove us out, and there we means to bide. You have seed that row of oaks as grows in the hedge behind our house. One of ’em leaned over the roof, and one of the limbs was like to fall; but they wouldn’t cut him, just to spite us, and the rain dripping spoilt the thatch. So I just had another chimney built at that end for an oven, and kept up the smoke till all the tree that side died. I’ve had more than one pheasant through them oaks, as draws ’em: I had one in a gin as I put in the ditch by my garden.
“They started a tale as ’twas I as stole the lambs a year or two ago, and they had me up for it; but they couldn’t prove nothing agen me. Then they had me for unhinging the gates and drowning ’em in the water, but when they was going to try the case they two young farmers as you know of come and said as they did it when they was tight, and so I got off. They said as ’twas I that put the poison for the hounds when three on ’em took it and died while the hunt was on. It were the dalledest lie! I wouldn’t hurt a dog not for nothing. The keeper hisself put that poison, I knows, ’cause he couldn’t bear the pack coming to upset the pheasants. Yes, they been down upon I a main bit, but I means to bide. All the farmers knows as I never touched no lamb, nor even pulled a turmot, and they never couldn’t get no witnesses.
“After a bit I catched the keeper hisself and the policeman at it; and there be another as knows it, and who do you think that be? It be the man in town as got the licence to sell game as haves most of my hares; the keeper selled he a lot as the money never got to my lard’s pocket and the steward never knowed of. Look at that now! So now he shuts his eye and axes me to drink, and give me the ferreting job in Longlands Mound; but, Lord bless ’ee, I bean’t so soft as he thinks for.
“They used to try and get me to fight the keeper when they did catch me with a wire, but I knowed as hitting is transporting, and just put my hands in my pockets and let ’em do as they liked. They knows I bean’t afraid of ’em in the road; I’ve threshed more than one of ’em, but I ain’t going to jump into that trap. I’ve been before the bench, at one place and t’other, heaps of times, and paid the fine for trespass. Last time the chairman said to I, ‘So you be here again, Oby; we hear a good deal about you.’ I says, ‘Yes, my lard, I be here agen, but people never don’t hear nothing about you.’ That shut the old duffer up. Nobody never heard nothing of he, except at rent-audit.
“However, they all knows me now—my lard and the steward, and the keeper and the bailies, and the farmers; and they don’t take half the notice of I as they used to. The keeper he don’t dare, nor the policeman as I telled you, and the rest be got used to me and my ways. And I does very well one week with t’other. One week I don’t take nothing, and the next I haves a good haul, chiefly hares and rabbits; ’cause of course I never goes into the wood, nor the plantations. It wants eight or ten with crape masks on for that job.
“I sets up about four wires, sometimes only two; if you haves so many it is a job to look after ’em. I stops the hare’s other runs, so that she is sure to come along mine where I’ve got the turnpike up: the trick is to rub your hand along the runs as you want to stop, or spit on ’em, or summat like that; for a hare won’t pass nothing of that sort. So pussy goes back and comes by the run as I’ve chose: if she comes quick she don’t holler; if she comes slow she squeals a bit sometimes before the wire hangs her. Very often I bean’t fur off and stops the squealing. That’s why I can’t use a gin—it makes ’em holler so. I ferrets a goodish few rabbits on bright nights in winter.
“As for the pheasants, I gets them mostly about acorn-time; they comes out of the plantations then. I keeps clear of the plantations, because, besides the men a-watching, they have got dogs chained up, and alarm-guns as goes off if you steps on the spring; and some have got a string stretched along as you be pretty sure to kick against, and then, bang! and all the dogs sets up a yowling. Of course it’s only powder, but it brings the keepers along. But when the acorns and the berries be ripe, the pheasants comes out along the hedges after ’em, and gets up at the haws and such like. They wanders for miles, and as they don’t care to go all the way back to roost they bides in the little copses as I told you of. They come to the same copses every year, which is curious, as most of them as will come this year will be shot before next.