nd was a very different character. He had been the dread
of the whole squirearchy. A more bold and dexterous poacher did not
exist. Now my acquaintance with this latter person, named Will Peterson,
and more popularly "Will o' the Wisp," had commenced thus: Bolt had
managed to rear, in a small copse about a mile from the house,--and
which was the only bit of ground in my uncle's domains that might by
courtesy be called "a wood,"--a young colony of pheasants, that he
dignified by the title of a "preserve." This colony was audaciously
despoiled and grievously depopulated, in spite of two watchers, who,
with Bolt, guarded for seven nights successively the slumbers of the
infant settlement. So insolent was the assault that bang, bang! went
the felonious gun,--behind, before, within but a few yards of the
sentinels,--and the gunner was off and the prey seized, before they
could rush to the spot. The boldness and skill of the enemy soon
proclaimed him, to the experienced watchers, to be Will o' the Wisp; and
so great was their dread of this fellow's strength and courage, and so
complete their despair of being a match for his swiftness and cunning,
that after the seventh night the watchers refused to go out any longer;
and poor Bolt himself was confined to his bed by an attack of what
a doctor would have called rheumatism, and a moralist, rage. My
indignation and sympathy were greatly excited by this mortifying
failure, and my interest romantically aroused by the anecdotes I had
heard of Will o' the Wisp; accordingly, armed with a thick bludgeon, I
stole out at night, and took my way to the copse. The leaves were not
off the trees, and how the poacher contrived to see his victims I know
not; but five shots did he fire, and not in vain, without allowing me to
catch a glimpse of him. I then retreated to the outskirt of the copse,
and waited patiently by an angle which commanded two sides of the wood.
Just as the dawn began to peep, I saw my roan emerge within twenty yards
of me. I held my breath, suffered him to get a few steps from the wood,
crept on so as to intercept his retreat, and then pounce--such a bound!
My hand was on his shoulder,--prr, prr; no eel was ever more lubricate.
He slid from me like a thing immaterial, and was off over the moors with
a swiftness which might well have baffled any clodhopper,--a race whose
calves are generally absorbed in the soles of their hobnail shoes. But
the Hellenic Institute, with its cla