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People said that Veale was half a gipsy, that his boys were growing up as hardy young poachers, and that every time he got drunk at the Barradine Arms he would himself produce wire nooses from his pocket, and offer to go out and snare a pheasant before the morning if anybody would pay for it in advance by another quart of ale.
They had themselves been brought like poachers before the justices for a horse-race or a cock-fight. At every breath of a rising a squad of the New Model had quartered itself in the manor-house and a warrant from the Major-general of the district had cleared the stables. Nor was this all. The same tyranny which pressed on their social and political life had pressed on their religious life too.
But it was a dangerous sport, as the keepers also knew that deer were out of bounds, and they would form some counter-plan, and one peculiarly nasty plan they had was to go out about three or four o'clock in the morning and secrete themselves somewhere close to the village to intercept the poachers on their return.
It had, indeed, been a fearful amusement of Tim and other Hintock lads especially those who had a dim sense of becoming renowned poachers when they reached their prime to drag out this trap from its hiding, set it, and throw it with billets of wood, which were penetrated by the teeth to the depth of near an inch.
He rode quietly up the valley, pausing often to listen and to scrutinize the landscape; but no sign of camp-fire and no further rifle-shots came, and at last he went into camp upon the trail, resolved to wait till the poachers appeared, a ward which his experience as a soldier helped him to maintain without nodding.
Then she lost her head, aroused the house, related how angry Jean was, and said that he had gone after the poachers, and immediately all the male farm-servants, even the boys, went in search of their master.
At last he thought an opportunity offered for bringing in a well-prepared anecdote which he had about Cambaceres, and a hot blackbird and white feet, but unluckily a country gentleman would tell some history of a battle between poachers and gamekeepers, which fixed the attention of the company till the moment for the anecdote was past.
The poachers crept out grinning, and watched the keepers' progress along the hill-face, till they disappeared into the Maxwell woods. "Ee be sold again blast 'im!" said Hurd, with a note of quite disproportionate exultation in his queer, cracked voice. "Now I'll set them snares. But you'd better git home."
He had also rather extensive gardens, from which he sold quantities of vegetables. It was more than suspected that the carrier's cart was really Luke's that is, he found the money for horsing it, and could take possession if he liked. The carrier's cart took his rabbits, and the game he purchased of poachers, to the railway, and the vegetables from the gardens to the customers in town.
Then a keeper climbed the tree, and cried out that it was hollow, and there was a skeleton inside. "It's my belief," said the man, "that Sir Massingberd must have climbed up into the fork to look about him for poachers, and that the wood gave way beneath him, and let him down feet foremost into the trunk."
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