than he examined the cupboard, the shelves of which were empty, saving of a little oatmeal in a jar, a small portion of salt, the remains of a coarse brown loaf, and a few pieces of crockery. The wife returned with a frying-pan, which she had borrowed, having sold her own during her husband's imprisonment, together with the saucepan; so the potatoes were put on in the tin kettle. The husband watched every movement, and soon discovered the ́utter "nakedness of the land."

Their frugal meal over, and the children in bed, the young couple sat down to talk over their prospects. John's place in the farm had been filled up by another man, and several of the villagers were at work on the roads, their wages one shilling per day—a sorry prospect with a wife and three children; so John sighed and shook his head, whilst his partner remarked, "that half a loaf was better than no bread, and matters would mend with the spring."

The husband applied next day to the overseers, and was placed to break stones on the highroad. He was much respected by his fellow-labourers; and to welcome his return, they in the evening went into the village alehouse to treat him to a pint and a pipe. Whilst seated on the long settle before a comfortable fire, talking over old times, the gamekeeper entered with his dog and gun, and took his seat on the opposite bench. The first words exchanged between the two were, "Well, informer!" and, "Well, jail-bird!" The landlord chanced to enter, or the altercation would soon have risen high; as it was, they each confined themselves to a little savage recrimination.

"Remember, you'll have six months the next time I catch you," said the gamekeeper.

"Shall I indeed ?" answered John Burrows, knitting his brows as he spoke; "and what will you have, think you?"

Perhaps a broken head, if you can give me one," replied the gamekeeper, with a forced and savage laugh.

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"I don't think we should part on such terms as we did before," replied Burrows; "I hope we shall not meet to try."

They still continued to "rip up the old grievance;" the gamekeeper contending that he found him with the hare in his hand, and Burrows still persisting, as before, that he picked it up out of the ditch in the field by the wood-side as he was returning from his work in the evening.

"You well know, Parks," said a stout, athletic young man, addressing the gamekeeper, "that I had thrown it there; I have told you so fifty times, and bid you do your worst; I saw you coming, and threw it there, and what more do you want? I don't believe John Burrows ever set a snare in his life; I have hundreds, and everybody knows it-take your change out of that.”

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"I never did," answered Burrows; nor was I ever a poacher in my life, and yet I have had three months of it, and lost a good place of work into the bargain. Parks," added he, looking fixedly at the gamekeeper, "you're a dd rascal, and, weak as I am through prison diet, I should like you to stand up before me for half an hour now, just to try which is the best man."

"He'll none fight," said the young man who had so openly declared himself a poacher, and his lip curled with scorn as he spoke, "unless it be when he meets a man alone in the woods -he armed with his gun, and the other only with his walking-stick-as he did when he shot the poor shoemaker dead; they brought it in manslaughter,' added he, with a sneer, "when it was a cowardly, coldblooded murder. Parks, I wouldn't have your conscience for ten times your salary!"

The landlord again interposed, and as one or two under

keepers had by this

came more general.

time entered, the conversation beFrom that night John Burrows and

the poacher became sworn friends; and the latter often vowed that if he ever met with Parks whilst he was out at night, he would pay him off for "old scores." Dick Heron, the poacher, was seldom without money, and he often enticed Burrows to drink with him; for he well knew that his companion had suffered imprisonment unjustly, and although sorry for what he could never remedy, yet he tried to make up for it in the best way he could. How he got rid of the game was a secret between him and the village butcher, who was on intimate terms with a licensed game-seller in an adjacent market-town. The keepers might watch, Heron still poached; and it was whispered that Parks had more than once avoided coming in contact with him on a moonlight night, and had turned off purposely into another path in the wood. Heron even boasted that he had often seen the keeper's back; and as for his dog, he had patted it so often in the alehouse, that it knew him as well as it did Parks-came up, smelt him, wagged its tail, and then followed the keeper. There was no doubt much truth in Heron's boast; for Parks had, as we before stated, been tried for murder, and he might have some dread at meeting with the poacher alone, for he was the "hero of a hundred fights."

Many a shilling did the poacher give to Burrows, and many a hare and rabbit were snugly covered under a crust, and made into a pie and baked in the oven of that cottage, though not without alarm on the part of the wife at first, until Heron reasoned and argued, and showed that the farmers were compelled to feed the hares which the squire sold, and that more than one of them had accepted of hares from his own hand. These arguments, together with a hard winter, only six shillings a week, and three small

children, did much towards reconciling Mrs. Burrows to what she still considered to be wrong. She also did the poacher's washing and mending, and he paid her like a prince, though he regularly worked on the roads. The overseer once caught him eating his dinner by the roadside; it was a small cold hare-pie. He asked Dick where he got the hare, and his answer was, "I found it ready cooked under the crust." 66 They will have thee one of these days," said the farmer, smiling. "I shall be more deserving of three months than Burrows was," replied Dick: "I saw a fine hare this morning somebody had thrust into a hole in the north end of your hay-stack, and I left it there."

"It is a cold day," said the farmer, "and a pint of ale will do you no harm to-night;" and he thrust a shilling into Heron's hand, and on the following Sunday sat down to dinner with a beautiful hare on the table. Everybody could trust Dick Heron; he never betrayed a friend in his life, and the worst word they could ever say of him was, "He's a poacher!" The overseer of the highway did no more than Mrs. Burrows had done, nor did he enjoy the dish a bit the less through knowing that he came by it illegally; he had but little doubt that he had fed it himself, for he was a severe sufferer through game, as his wheat fields skirted the wood-side, yet he dare not kill one; the squire allowed none of his tenants to take out a license.

A few evenings after, the principal farmers in the hundred met to talk over a little parish business in the village hostel, when one of them said, he should be compelled to give up the lease he had taken of the squire; alleging, as a reason, the havoc made by game amongst his crops. "I have this winter," said he, lost one-third of my turnips through the hares and rabbits; what we turn up over-night,

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are half eaten up by them before the morning. I have seen fifty of them in the wood-end field; and three hares eat as much as any sheep."

"Nor is that all," answered another farmer, who was also a great sufferer through game-preserving; "they nibble the heart out of the young clover, and leave the under-grass worth but little for summer hay; the same with the spring wheat, they devour the early shoots, and others that bud out in their place are weakly and worthless, and unripe when harvest-time comes. True, we can throw up the land, which is but poor recompense, after all that we laid out in manuring, and draining, and improvements."

"I had to sow barley twice this season," continued a third, "for the pheasants came out and ate up the grain before it had struck into the soil. Game sweeps off every

thing both above and below ground. This year hundreds of rabbits choose my potato-field to burrow in. I spoke to the steward about the destruction they had caused; he told me I knew how to remedy it: the word was as usualleave."

"But the worst of all is the allotments," said an old man; "I am sorry for the poor labourers; early and late do they toil at their spot of ground, up with the sun, and off by five or six to their regular day's work, after having worked like slaves in their bit of garden ground. Their beans and peas appear, early cabbages and other vegetables, and in one night are all eaten up bare. Poor Burrows told me his seed last year cost him altogether a pound, and he had nothing left worth gathering, for the hares had eaten up all."

"I am afraid sending him to prison will prove his ruin," said the first speaker; "not that I think it's any disgrace to him, for he neither robbed nor injured anybody;