impossible for him ever to quit the course he has taken. His children, again, must come within reach of similar influences, and thus for a lengthened period there must be a predisposition towards this special occupation.

Long service in one particular situation is not so common now as it used to be. Men move about from place to place, but wherever they are they still engage in the same capacity; and once a gamekeeper always a gamekeeper is pretty nearly true. Even in the present day instances of families holding the office for more than one or two generations on the same estate may be found; and years ago such was often the case. Occasionally the keeper’s family has in this way by the slow passage of time become in a sense associated with that of his employer; many years of faithful service sensibly abridging the social gulf between master and servant. The contrary holds equally true; and so at the present day short terms of service and constant changes are accompanied by a sharp distinction separating employer and employé.

In such cases of long service the keeper holds a position more nearly resembling the retainer of the olden time than perhaps any other “institution” of modern life. Pensioned off in his old age in the cottage where he was born, or which, at any rate, he first entered as a child, he potters about under his own vine and fig-tree—i.e. the pear and damson trees he planted forty years before—and is privileged now and then to give advice on matters arising out of the estate. He can watch the young broods of pheasants still, and superintend the mixing of their food: his trembling hand, upon the back of which the corded sinews are so strongly marked now the tissue has wasted, and over which the blue veins wander, can set a trap when the vermin become too venturesome.

He is yet a terror to evil-doers, and in no jot abates the dignity of more vigorous days; so that the superannuated ancients whose task it is to sweep the fallen leaves from the avenue and the walks near the great house, or to weed the gravel drive in feeble acknowledgment of the charitable dole they receive, fall to briskly when they see him coming with besom and rusty knife wherewith to “uck” out the springing grass. He daily gossips with the head gardener (nominal), as old or older than himself; but his favourite haunt is a spot on the edge of a fir plantation where lies a fallen “stick” of timber. Here, sheltered by the thick foliage of the fir and the hawthorn hedge at his back from the wind, he can sit on the log, and keep watch over a descending slope of meadow bounding the preserves and crossed by footpaths, along which loiterers may come. His sturdy son now sways the sceptre of ash over the old woods, and other descendants are employed about the place.

Sometimes in the great house there may be seen the counterfeit presentment of such a retainer limned fifty years ago, with dog and gun, and characteristic background of trees. His wife has perhaps survived till recently—strong and hale almost to the last; the most voluble gossip of the hamlet, full of traditions relating to the great house and its owners; a virago if crossed. It is recorded that upon one occasion in her prime she confronted a couple of poachers, and, by dint of tongue and threats of assistance close at hand, forced them to retire. It was at night that, her husband being from home and hearing shots in the wood, she sallied forth armed with a gun, faced the poachers, and actually drove them away, doubtless as much from fear of recognition as of bodily injury, though even that she was capable of inflicting, being totally fearless.

Nothing can be more natural than that when a man has shown an earnest desire to give satisfaction and proved himself honest and industrious, his employer should exhibit an interest in the welfare of his family. Now and then a small farm may be found in the hands of a man descended from or connected with a keeper. To successfully work a tenancy of such narrow limits it is necessary that the occupier should himself labour in the field from morn till dewy eve—the capacity to work being even more essential than capital; and so it happens that the smaller farms are occasionally held by men who have risen from the lower classes. The sons of keepers also become gentlemen’s servants, as grooms, etc, in or out of the house.

A proposal was not long since made that gentlemen who had met with misfortune or were unable to obtain congenial employment should take service as gamekeepers—after the manner in which ladies were invited to become “helps.” The idea does not appear to have received much practical support, nor does it seem feasible looking at the altered relations of society in these days. A gentleman “out of luck,” and with a taste for outdoor life and no objection to work, could surely do far better in the colonies, where he could shoot for his “own hand,” and in course of time achieve an independence, which he could never hope to attain as a gamekeeper.

In the olden times, no doubt, younger brothers did become, in fact, gamekeepers, head grooms, huntsmen, etc, to the head of the family. There was less of the sense of servitude and loss of dignity when the feeling of clanship was prevalent, when the great house was regarded as the natural and proper resource of every cadet of the family. But all this is changed. And for a man of education to descend to trapping vermin, filling cartridges, and feeding pheasants all his life would be a palpable absurdity with Australia open to him and the virgin soil of Central Africa eager for tillage.

Neither is every man’s constitution capable of withstanding the wear and tear of a keeper’s life. I have delineated the more favourable side already; but it has its shadows. Robust health, power of bearing fatigue, and above all of sustaining constant exposure in our most variable climate, are essential. No labourer is so exposed as the keeper: the labourer does not work in continued wet, and he is sure of his night’s rest. The keeper is often about the best part of the night, and he cannot stay indoors because it rains.

The woods are lovely in the sunshine of summer; they are full of charm when the leaves are bursting forth in spring or turning brown with the early autumn frosts; but in wet weather in the winter they are the most wretched places conceivable in which to stroll about. The dead fern and the long grass are soaked with rain, and cling round the ankles with depressing tenacity. Every now and then the feet sink into soddened masses of decaying leaves—a good deal, too, of the soil itself is soft and peaty, being formed from the decomposed vegetation of years; while the boughs against which the passer-by must push fly back and send a cold shower down the neck. In fog as well as in rain the trees drip continuously; the boughs condense the mist and it falls in large drops—a puff of wind brings down a tropical shower.

In warm moist weather the damp steam that floats in the atmosphere is the reverse of pleasant. But a thaw is the worst of all, when the snow congealed on the branches and against the trunks on the windward side, slips and comes down in slushy, icy fragments, and the south-west or south-east wind, laden with chilling moisture, penetrates to the very marrow. Even Robin Hood is recorded to have said that he could stand all kinds of weather with impunity, except the wind which accompanies a thaw. Wet grass has a special faculty for saturating leather. The very boots with which you may wade into a stream up to your ankles in perfect comfort are powerless to keep out the dew or raindrops on the grass-blades. The path of the keeper is by no means always strewn with flowers.

Probably the number of keepers has much increased of recent years, since the flood-tide of commercial prosperity set in. Every successful