ses had to pick their way--one couldn't imagine a
more convenient trysting-place for vagabonds and tramps. It seems
incredible that such things should go on at our doors, so to speak,
but it is very difficult to get at them. Our keepers and M. de M.,
whose property touches ours, have had various members of the gang
arrested, but they always begin again. The promiscuity of living is
something awful, girls and young men squatting and sleeping in the
same room on heaps of dirty rags. There have been some arrests for
infanticide, when a baby's appearance and disappearance was too
flagrant, but the girls don't care. They do their time of prison, come
out quite untamed by prison discipline, and begin again their wild,
free life. One doesn't quite understand the farmer who gives any
shelter to such a bad lot, but I fancy there is a tacit understanding
that his hares and rabbits must be left unmolested.

It is amusing to see the keepers when they suspect poachers are in
their woods. When the leaves are off they can see at a great distance,
and with their keen, trained eyes make out quite well when a moving
object is a hare, or a roebuck, or a person on all fours, creeping
stealthily along. They have powerful glasses, too, which help them
very much. They, too, have their various tricks, like the poachers. As
the gun-barrel is seen at a great distance when the sun strikes it,
they cover it with a green stuff that takes the general tint of the
leaves and the woods, and post themselves, half hidden in the bushes,
near some of the quarries, where the poachers generally come. Then
they give a gun to an under-strapper, telling him to stand in some
prominent part of the woods, _his_ gun well in sight. That, of course,
the poachers see at once, so they make straight for the other side,
and often fall upon the keepers who are lying in wait for them. As a
general rule, they don't make much resistance, as they know the
keepers will shoot--not to kill them, but a shot in the ankle or leg
that will disable them for some time. I had rather a weakness for one
poaching family. The man was young, good-looking, and I don't really
believe a bad lot, but he had been unfortunate, had naturally a high
temper, and couldn't stand being howled at and sworn at when things
didn't go exactly as the patron wanted; consequently he never stayed
in any place, tried to get some other work, but was only fit for the
woods, where he knew every tree and root and th