’I lives with my granny in Thorney-lane:  it be outside the village.  My mother be married agen, you see, to the smith:  her have got a cottage as belongs to her.  My brother have got a van and travels the country; and sometimes I and my wife goes with him.  I larned to set up a wire when I went to plough when I were a boy, but never took to it regular till I went a-navigating [navvying] and seed what a spree it were.

’There ain’t no such chaps for poaching as they navigators in all England:  I means where there be a railway a-making.  I’ve knowed forty of ’em go out together on a Sunday, and every man had a dog, and some two; and good dogs too—­lots of ’em as you wouldn’t buy for ten quid.  They used to spread out like, and sweep the fields as clean as the crownd of your hat.  Keepers weren’t no good at all, and besides they never knowed which place us was going to make for.  One of the chaps gave I a puppy, and he growed into the finest greyhound as you’d find in a day’s walk.  The first time I was took up before the bench I had to go to gaol, because the contractor had broke and the works was stopped, so that my mates hadn’t no money to pay the fine.

’The dog was took away home to granny by my butty [comrade], but one of the gentlemen as seed it in the court sent his groom over and got it off the old woman for five pound.  She thought if I hadn’t the hound I should give it up, and she come and paid me out of gaol.  It was a wonder as I didn’t break her neck; only her was a good woman, you see, to I. But I wouldn’t have parted with that hound for a quart-full of sovereigns.  Many’s a time I’ve seed his name—­they changed his name, of course—­in the papers for winning coursing matches.  But we let that gent as bought him have it warm; we harried his pheasants and killed the most of ’em.

’After that I came home, and took to it regular.  It ain’t no use unless you do it regular.  If a man goes out into the fields now and then chance-like he don’t get much, and is most sure to be caught—­very likely in the place of somebody else the keepers were waiting for and as didn’t come.  I goes to work every day the same as the rest, only I always take piece-work, which I can come to when I fancy, and stay as late in the evening as suits me with a good excuse.  As I knows navigating, I do a main bit of draining and water-furrowing, and I gets good wages all the year round, and never wants for a job.  You see, I knows more than the fellows as have never been at nothing but plough.

’The reason I gets on so well poaching is because I’m always at work out in the fields, except when I goes with the van.  I watches everything as goes on, and marks the hare’s tracks and the rabbit buries, and the double mounds and little copses as the pheasants wanders off to in the autumn.  I keeps a ’nation good look-out after the keeper and his men, and sees their dodges—­which way they walks, and how they comes back sudden and unexpected on purpose.  There’s mostly one about with his eyes on me—­when they sees me working on a farm they puts a man special to look after me.  I never does nothing close round where I’m at work, so he waits about a main bit for nothing.