rigging stood out black and distinct against the sky as he came out on the shore. Far in the offing was a ship in full sail: he stood for a moment watching her, as she seemed to follow on the track of the only thing he had ever loved, his son; then his thoughts went back to his "troubles," as he called them. He had made a bad bargain with the Devil: the county notes had been of scarcely any value; the seeming treasure had turned into dead leaves, as in an old fairy tale.

"It were hardly worth while," he muttered to himself, as he came to a crowd of men unloading a timber vessel. It was not a lofty sentiment for such a crime, but some petty detail seems to fill a mind stupefied by guilt and drink to the utter exclusion of the great horror itself. In the bustle and confusion he was struck by a plank, and at the same moment a tipsy man hustled against him. "What for is thattens?" said Joshua, suspiciously, returning what he thought a blow. In the drunken squabble which ensued he lost his footing, and fell over the river wall among the stones on the shore, and was only rescued much injured and half-drowned. They took him to the workhouse, and when the slow constables of that day came upon his trail they found him dying. "Joshua Stracey ?" said one of them, laying a hand on his arm gently. "Joshua Stracey it is," said he, mechanically, without opening his eyes. "It werena worth while," he repeated again, and passed away.

The horsedealer was found guilty and executed.

An old guide-book of some fifty years ago, describing this part of the country, tells how a murder was committed in this valley, and after a solemn little sermon against highway robbery and murder, proceeds to

say

"that the murderer was hanged on the scene of his wickedness," and adds, without the smallest surprise or disgust, evidently as an ordinary event, that his body was hanging there in chains, on a gallows erected for it, when he (the guide-book) passed that way some time after.

There has been more change in the habits of thought and feeling among us during the last fifty years than had taken place during the previous eight hundred.

It was a bright autumn day in Canada some seven or eight years after. A building "bee" (work to be repaid in kind), in which all the few neighbours far and wide had joined, had just raised a new and larger loghouse for the family, which had pretty well outgrown the old shed. Roland and German, two tall, strong, bearded fellows, with axes in their hands, were just finishing a "snake " fence, while Cassie, now a handsome matronly woman, stood at the door, with a child on each side, calling them into supper.

"Where's mother?" said German. "Is she after the weaning

calf?"

At that moment, however, proudly carrying the calf's jug. farm by the incessant prattle of

she came in sight, with her little squire Their course might be traced all over the one of the loving pair, while the almost

entire silence of the other did not seem to prevent the most perfect sympathy between the friends.

She seemed now younger than Cassie, with that peculiarly placid other-world look which keeps the heart and the expression young till

death.

'You spoil un, mother," said Cassie, with a smile.

"Nay, I dunna humour un, and 'tain't love that spoils the sun ma's the fruit rippen. I mind when I were a little un and hadn't got it," said she, with an answering smile.

"But we dunna see that the fruit didna rippen wi'out," said German affectionately.

They stood for a moment at the door of their new dwelling. It was on a promontory overlooking the beautiful lake: the forest spread wide all round the shore; their own clearing was the only bit of civilization in sight. The woods were touched with the magnificent colour of an American autumn, and there was a gorgeous sunset, besides, over

all.

"Yer wouldn't hae seen such a sight as that in England," said Roland, looking west.

The women turned towards the old country in the east, where a little moon was rising in a pale delicate blue sky. A woman is generally more apt to look towards the past than forward: a man's mind inclines more towards the future than to recollect.

"Eh, there was fair things too in the dear old land," said they, "though things mebbe werena all so gaudy for the look.""

Poaching.

We have no intention of trying to do in this article what very few, either lawyers or game-preservers, could do for us, that is, "lay down the law upon the subject." There are, probably, few Acts of Parliament so uncertain, notwithstanding their proverbial uncertainty, as those which relate to game; and all that we aspire to do is to place a few general considerations before our readers, which may have the effect of opening their eyes to the true difficulties of the question.

At the very outset, however, we would beg them to take note that the unpopularity of the game-laws and the mischiefs which arise from poaching are two perfectly distinct things. That the latter is assisted by the former all men know who know anything about game. But the one does not depend upon the other. It is not poaching which makes the gamelaws unpopular, nor is it the unpopularity of the game-laws which begets poaching. Doubtless there is some connection between the two. A poacher counts upon a certain amount of public sympathy when he is placed in the dock; a tenant-farmer does not break his heart at the escape of a poacher; but the sources of the two feelings, dissatisfaction, namely, with the game-laws, and a resolution to live by the breach of them, are quite separate from each other.

The only people who have any practical right (theory is another thing) to complain of the game-laws are the tenant-farmers; and even their complaint, when we come to look into it, is reducible within a very small compass. First of all, there is the substantial injury done by game; but this, after all, is a matter of political economy. Either a man does not pay as much for land subject to the depredations of game as for land not so subject, or he does. If he does not, he is no loser. If he does, why does he? He takes a farm with his eyes open, and if he consents to let the game go for nothing, it must be because the farm is so advantageous to him in other ways that it is not worth his while to raise the point. This is the broad view of the case. Of course in matters of detail hardships will occur; but there is no hardship in the principle. An estate with so much game upon it is simply a commodity in the market. Farmers are supposed to know their own interests quite as well as other people. They may take it or leave it. But there is besides this the sentimental grievance, which we hold to be the stronger of the two; and this we fear is one which country gentlemen are not sufficiently anxious to mitigate. There is one practice in particular, which causes more heartburnings than all the other game-law grievances put together: we mean the practice of letting the shooting over the heads of the tenant

farmers.

This they cannot endure. Nor, perhaps, is their resentment to be wondered at. A farm certainly is not a freehold; but, nevertheless, the sense of possession is easily engendered by occupation, and it is a very potent sentiment in the English mind. It is aggravating to see a parcel of strangers running over your land as if it was their own, breaking down your fences and laughing at your protests, and doubly aggravating when you know that my lord or the squire makes a profit out of the transaction. Farmers think, moreover, in many places, that where the landlord doesn't shoot himself, the right ought to devolve upon the tenant: while, over and above all this, there is a general soreness at what seems to be an aristocratic privilege—though nothing can be more ridiculous than to regard it in that light-only to be overcome by dint of great tact, courtesy, and liberality on the landlord's part, which he is not always, perhaps, sufficiently studious to exhibit.

The above are the only sources of any general dissatisfaction with the game-laws which impartial critics need recognize. The starving peasant who snares a rabbit to get a meal for his sick wife, and is imprisoned among felons in consequence, is a pure myth, as all men well acquainted with country life know; the misfortune being that a good many of the directors of public opinion in London are not, we fear, well acquainted with country life. And as for the regular poaching gangs, we do not know why they should constitute an argument against the game-laws, any more than the existence of burglars is an argument against silver-spoons. These remarks bring us down to the special subject of the present articlepoachers, who and what are they? what are the laws on which we rely for punishing them? and how far are these laws effective?

The reader will be prepared to hear that with the changes which have come over game-preserving, corresponding changes have ensued in the condition of the poacher. As game has approximated to the character of ordinary property, poaching has approximated to the character of ordinary theft. In former days, when natural woods, commons, and wastes were more abundant than they are now, when population was much more scanty, transport much more tedious, and our habits of life altogether different, it is possible that the poacher was one who killed game for his own consumption; and that interference with him was rather the vindication of a feudal right than necessary to the preservation of property. We may picture him to ourselves, if we like, lurking in some sequestered den-half cave, half cottage-built into the hill-side, and protected by a spreading oak, and there will be no one to disturb our vision. We may imagine him a good sportsman, a self-taught naturalist, sober, and, in his own eyes at least, honest and industrious. Last, but not least, let him stand six feet high, be a model of strength and activity, with a frank bold countenance, a merry blue eye, extremely white teeth, and a smile that would subdue a duchess. Our fancy may paint him as we like, and nobody, we repeat, can contradict us. That is the poacher of the golden age; before modern preserves, modern battues, or percussion-caps were invented.

But as we do not believe in the "starving-peasant" theory of poaching, still less do we believe in that romantic and picturesque ideal which modern novelists do still occasionally present to us. The poacher of the old school, if he ever existed, with his Allan-a-Dale swagger and Robin Hood-like generosity, is as extinct as Dick Turpin. To him has succeeded the poacher of the iron age: the member of a ruffianly gang, whose business is to fill the dealers' shops in town and country, and to get drunk upon the proceeds. These gangs vary in number and in daring, from the topsawyers of London down to the provincial artists who are shoemakers or ratcatchers by day and poachers only by night. The cream of the profession, we fancy, sully not their hands by any meaner occupation, not at least during the days of their glory-"in the season of the year." These men, making some large town or village in a good game country, or perhaps London itself, their head-quarters, carry on operations in a systematic and wholesale fashion. They have their spies and underlings in the neighbourhood of all the large preserves, from whom they receive accurate information as to the quantity of game, the likeliest covers, the movements of the keepers, and the character of the local police. In fact their precautions and their organization are exactly the same as those of any regular gang of housebreakers. When it is once determined to make a descent on some particular preserve, the first thing to be done is to create a false alarm in an opposite direction. The keepers and watchers on the property about to be attacked are pretty sure to hear of this, and to be thrown into a state of false security; while another and more important point will have been gained if the police have been induced to look out along a different line of highroad. The proper steps having been taken to secure these desirable objects, the party sets out so as to arrive at the scene of action between eleven and twelve at night. If they are sufficiently numerous to defy any force which the keepers can bring against them, they are, of course, less attentive to those precautions which otherwise they are bound to take. But this is not often the case, though sometimes gangs of as many as forty or fifty men will invade a well-stocked preserve, and plunder it before the keeper's eyes. However, the ordinary way of proceeding makes secrecy desirable, and your regular poacher never courts a collision. He would rather do anything than fight, not from want of courage, but because resistance, if ineffectual, only aggravates the penalty, while severe hurts given or received on either side, create a scandal and publicity which is sure to be injurious to the trade. Accordingly he takes as many precautions as a Red Indian to ensure perfect silence. The merest whimper from a dog; the crackle of a dry stick; a cough, or a sneeze, may at any moment betray his whereabouts to some watcher more vigilant than his fellows, or worse than all, to that savage and sleepless Cerberus, the keeper's dog. The wheels of the cart, and sometimes even the feet of the horse, are muffled; while long practice has made the poacher perfect in breaking the necks of hares and rabbits without allowing them to squeal. Herein, however, lies one of his greatest dangers. The scream of a hare can be