d; but they ain't easy caught, eh?"

"I don't rightly know, sir; but there's gents comes as stands
close by the water, and flogs down stream with the sun in their
backs, and uses all manner o' vlies, wi' long names; and then
they gwoes away, and says, 'tain't no use flying here, 'cas
there's so much cadis bait and that like."

"Ah, very likely," said Tom, with a chuckle.

"The chaps as catches the big fishes, sir," went on the keeper,
getting confidential, "is thay cussed night-line poachers.
There's one o' thay as has come here this last spring-tide--the
artfullest chap as ever I come across, and down to every move on
the board. He don't use no shove-nets, nor such-like tackle; not
he; I s'pose he don't call that sport. Besides, I got master to
stake the whole water, and set old knives and razors about in the
holes, but that don't answer; and this joker all'us goes
alone--which, in course, he couldn't do with nets. Now, I knows
within five or six yards where that chap sets his lines, and I
finds 'em, now and again, set the artfullest you ever see. But
'twould take a man's life to look arter him, and I knows he gets,
maybe, a dozen big fish a week, do all as I knows."

"How is it you can't catch him, keeper?" said Tom, much amused.

"Why you see sir, he don't come at any hours. Drat un!" said the
keeper, getting hot; "blessed if I don't think he sometimes comes
down among the haymakers and folk at noon, and up lines and off,
while they chaps does nothing but snigger at un--all I knows is,
as I've watched till midnight, and then on again at dawn for'n,
and no good come on it but once."

"How was that?"

"Well, one mornin', sir, about last Lady-day, I comes quite quiet
up stream about dawn. When I get's to Farmer Giles's piece (that
little rough bit, sir, as you sees t'other side the stream, two
fields from our outside bounds), I sees un a stooping down and
hauling in's line. 'Now's your time, Billy,' says I, and up the
hedge I cuts, hotfoot, to get betwixt he and our bounds. Wether
he seen me or not, I can't mind; leastways, when I up's head
t'other side the hedge, vorights where I seen him last, there was
he a-trotting up stream quite cool, a-pocketing a two-pounder.
Then he sees me and away we goes side by side for the bounds--he
this side the hedge and I t'other; he takin' the fences like our
old greyhound-bitch, Clara. W e takes the last fence on to that
fuzzy field as you sees there, Sir (parson's glebe an