Nor did it at all improve his temper to be told, when in the alchouse, how thin his old sweetheart looked while her husband was in prison. Thus, if neither malice nor revenge lurked underneath their mutual dislike, these were reasons strong enough to prove that they had no cause to respect each other.

In ordinary cases, where gamekeepers and poachers attack each other, the latter have generally a wish only to escape clear with their game; if called upon to surrender, they refuse; they are seldom the first to commence the quarrel, conscious that, in the eye of the law, they are considered the aggressors; and when a man has gone thus far, who would not, if he could, repel force by force, when he knows that if captured his doom is a prison? Years ago the punishment for night poaching was transportation and we marvel that so little blood was shed during that tyrannical period. Keepers, we believe, at that time, were more cautious in their attacks, and "Liberty or Death," we well know, were watchwords amongst the poachers. A man had a more powerful motive for defending himself and making his escape then than now; and we doubt not but that between both parties there was a silent understanding that they went out to kill or be killed if discovered, and that this cruel law, which gave no quarter, caused both gamekeepers and poachers mutually to shun each other. Game preserves were in those days guarded by man-traps and spring-guns; the innocent trespasser, who might by chance lose his way in the night, was as liable to be shot dead, as the poacher who wilfully ventured on those forbidden grounds in quest of game; not that we think the man who caused the spring-gun to be placed there, and planted the hidden wire along the ground, one jot less guilty of murder than if he had held the muzzle of a pistol close to the trespasser's heart, and pulled the

deadly trigger with his own hand. One was a cold-blooded, cowardly mode of attack, leaving a man no means of defending himself; the other might admit of a moment's parley, and a chance of striking aside the arm before the shot was fired. Nor is the system much better now; for whilst gamekeepers go out in the night with loaded firearms, poachers will, whenever they can, also arm themselves with the same deadly weapons. There must be wild places open and free, in which the poacher may set his snares, and ramble with his dog, before game preserves will be considered strictly as private property. Once let the poacher know, that on certain waste lands, open heaths and commons, fields through which foot-paths run, that there, and there only, he may capture game without molestation, and the general voice will soon be uplifted against him if he ventures upon private and forbidden grounds; let this be tried until a better remedy can be discovered for this great evil. Depend upon it we shall meet with fewer of those midnight attacks and savage murders which so often meet our eyes in the columns of the newspapers; that a poacher will then be looked upon in no other light than a robber; and that even the feeling of the honest amongst his own class of society will not then, as now, run in his favour. Let him carry his gun, if he can afford one, openly, and in the daytime; but on no account to go abroad with it at night. Let the cur run barking at his heels, and the wire snares hang dangling over his shoulders; let there be no more mystery or secret about his profession than there is in that of the angler, who sallies forth with his rod and basket in the open eye of day; and when he begins to find, in the limited range which is allowed him, that but little gain can be obtained from such a mode of life, necessity will compel him to become industrious, and he will soon glide into laborious habits like other men: he

will seek game only for amusement, instead of profit; and when he perceives how little he can capture, he will soon be ashamed of his profession.

This, in our humble opinion, would do more towards the preservation of game than all the laws which have been hitherto enacted. Few would then be found to pity the professed poacher. What game he could fairly kill would be his own; and if we err not, such a plan would go a great way towards exterminating the battue system of murder which too often takes place, for few gentlemen would then drive the game out of their preserves by this wholesale destruction.

The gamekeeper and Burrows had both made up their minds that, meet whenever they might, on forbidden ground, no quarter would either be asked for or given; and Heron, who had no malice in his nature, did all that lay in his power to prevent hostilities between them, nor would he, if he could hinder it, let his companion go out alone in the night. "I like to fight a man, and have done with it," said the open-hearted poacher; "if he beat me, I would shake hands with him the next minute. Never let a grudge grow after you have stood up man to man; it's a bad plan, Burrows, and nobody knows where it will end."

"I cannot forget it, if I would," replied Burrows; one thing I have made up my mind to, and that is, never purposely to put myself in his way; if we meet, and he takes no notice of me, I shall take none of him. If he threatens

to inform against me, I shall not complain. But if he lays a hand upon me, or even raises his arm, then," added he, after a moment's pause, "why the best man wins."

"But what," said Heron, "if he only warns you off the ground, and tells you, if you will promise not to come there again, he will take no notice of it, surely you would go?-I know I should."

"That will never be the case," answered Burrows; "meet when we may, we part not on such peaceable terms. He knows it, and so do I. A wild cat and a terrier are as likely to lie down side by side as we are. They tell me Parks has given up carrying a gun in the night; it is a fair challenge now! Our two cudgels were reared up in the same corner one day in the ale-house, and we both looked at them, then at each other, but neither of us spoke. This," said he, lifting up a knotted crab-tree bludgeon as he spoke, "will decide either his fate or mine."

"I do not like this, Burrows," said Heron, in a solemn tone of voice, unlike his general manner of speaking; "promise me that you will never go out again in the night. I will run all risks, and go share and share alike, the same as if you were with me. If Parks meets me, we shall not fight, depend upon it; and if we do, and I come off with the worst, I have neither wife nor child to leave behind in trouble, and I would not forget to give him one or two in, if we should ever come to blows, for what he has done for you; but God forbid I should ever kill him. I would rather be imprisoned a thousand times than do this. A few blows one may get the better of, but” he left the sentence unfinished, so much was he startled at the sudden change which had passed over the countenance of his companion, as he stood with his teeth clenched, his brows knitted together, and the crab-tree cudgel clutched in his hand, as if it had been screwed up in the jaws of a vice.

"You would say murder," replied Burrows; "but I seek not to shed his blood. I tell you, Heron, it is not that, nor do I well know what it is. But when I recall the naked shelves and empty cupboard, which I found on my return from prison, the thin hungry features of my

children, and the careworn, sorrowful countenance of their mother, I ask you if you think I can either forgive or forget that fellow's villany? Look at what I was before that time, and then at what I am now! No, the day of reckoning will come, and no one can prevent it."

Heron argued with him in vain, and it was noticed by many that the two poachers were less together than they usually were, and that, whenever he could, Burrows seemed to shun the society of his old companion.

The gamekeeper went his nightly rounds, as he was wont to do, but it was remarked by many that he did no more; that he left the thickets and underwoods unexplored, contenting himself by seeing that all was right along the pathways by which he passed. The peasants at the alehouse began to jeer him on the subject, to tell him that he was afraid of meeting with the ghost of the man he had shot, or that they had met Burrows in one place laden with game, and passed Heron in another smoking his pipe, and watching his snares, as if he were lord of the manor. All these twittings were not without their effect on Parks's temper, and he began to conclude within himself that they thought him a coward; but in this they were wrong, for saving in matters where his conscience smote him, he was a man of stout courage, and possessed great strength.

A few nights afterwards he captured two poachers; they had come from a village four or five miles distant; and although both parties were without fire-arms, they fought bravely, and by his own personal prowess Parks succeeded in taking them prisoners to the lodge. Even in this affair they managed to raise the laugh against him at the alehouse, as one of the poachers turned out to be a little knock-kneed tailor. The gamekeeper had drank pretty freely during the early part of the evening, and so far lost his temper, that he rose up and challenged the best man in

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