gone. As I goes all round, I knows the ways of all the
farmers, and them as bides out late at night at their friends', and they
as goes to bed early; and so I knows what paths to follow and what
fields I can walk about in and never meet nobody.

'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