A silent river reach shaded by trees. It is the end of a short summer night. We know that the poachers have lately been busy knitting their nets, and have come to intercept them. The "Alder Dub" may be easily netted, and contains a score nice trout. Poachers carefully study the habits of fish as well as those of game, both winged and furred. To the alder dub they know the trout make when the river is low. The poachers have not noted signs of wind and weather and of local migrations for twenty years past to be ignorant of this. And so here, in the dew-beaded grass, we lie in wait. It is two o'clock and a critical time. A strange breaking is in the east: grey--half-light, half-mist. If they come they will come now. In an hour the darkness will not hide them. We lie close to the bank thickly covered with bush and scrub. Two sounds are and have been heard all night--the ceaseless call of the crake and the not less ceaseless song of the sedge-bird. A lapwing gets up in the darkness and screams--an ominous sound, and we are all ear. Three forms descend the opposite bank, and on to the gravel bed. They empty the contents of a bag and begin to unroll its slow length. The breaking of a rotten twig in a preparatory movement for the rush sufficiently alarms them, and they dash into the wood as we into the water--content now to secure their cumbersome illegal net, and thus effectually stop their operations for three weeks at least. The grey becomes dawn and the dawn light as we wade wearily home through the long wet grass. And still the sedge warbler sings. CHAPTER II. POACHERS AND POACHING.--II.