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Only the shearwaters moaning in their burrows, the little wingless rail skulking from one grass tussock to another, and the saucy finch remained. It is an excellent example of what Prof. Nutting calls the survival of the inconspicuous. "Here on every side are bones bleaching in the sun, showing where the poachers had piled the bodies of the birds as they stripped them of wings and feathers.
"I hope not, my dear," John Thorndyke said lightly. "Some of the fellows we have sentenced may think that we were rather hard on them, but I do not think that any of them would feel it sufficiently to attempt to murder one; besides, Mark says that the fellow had a horse waiting for him, and none of our poachers would be likely to be the owner of a horse.
I seed him preaching to that 'ere Crawy, three or four times when he ought to have hauled him up. He consorts with them poachers, sir, uncommon. I hope he ben't one himself, that's all. 'Nonsense, Harry! 'Oh? Eh? Don't say old Harry don't know nothing, that's all. I've fixed his flint, anyhow. 'Ah! Smith! shouted the squire out of his study window, with a cheerful and appropriate oath.
Now listen!" Then he read the following statement, prepared by himself in an idle moment: "The Stowmarket Mystery is a strange mixture of the real and the unreal. Sir Alan Hume-Frazer, fourth baronet, met his death on the hunting-field. His horse blundered at a brook and the rider was impaled on a hidden stake, placed in the stream by his own orders to prevent poachers from netting trout.
He was one of those vagabond cosmopolites who shark about the world, as if they had no right or business in it, and who infest the skirts of society like poachers and interlopers.
Then I should inflame the peasants against the armed farm-boys, day-labourers, and poachers, and against the sportsmen from town, who stroll around without permission and crack away where they please. It only wants a beginning and a little combination, for the peasant, in his heart, is furious at this senseless shooting.
I have ten times more right to an opinion than you have. I can keep my head cool, and notice a hundred things that you would never see. I come fresh into your country life, and the first thing that strikes me is that the whole machinery of law and order seems to exist for nothing in the world but to protect your pheasants! There are policemen to catch poachers; there are magistrates to try them.
We laid the animal out between us, and were admiring it from the ear to the tip of his tail, when we were suddenly saluted with a voice close to us. "Oh, you blam'd young poachers, so I've caught you, have I?" We looked up, and beheld the common-keeper. "Come come along with me; we've a nice clink at Wandsworth to lock you up in. I've been looking a'rter you some time. Hand your gun here."
Some men, under the orders of the surveying party, were set to fire off guns in a particular quarter; on which all the game-keepers on the watch made off in that direction, and they were drawn away to such a distance in pursuit of the supposed poachers, as to enable a rapid survey to be made during their absence.
"`Ay, so all sailors say, I believe; and yet I would rather go to sea than lie here all day long. It's all owing to my being out as I used to do, night after night, watching for poachers. I had too little bed then, and now I've too much of it. But the sea must be grand. As the Bible says, "They who go upon the great waters, they see the wonders of the deep."
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