Presently the poachers lifted up the whole fire, which we now saw had been built upon a small square of sheet-iron, and removed it bodily to a fresh spot, under another tree. Here no fewer than four pheasants were secured one after another, and then the fire was moved again. So they went on for two hours or more, working round and round the glade. As nearly all the pheasants roosted in this part of the coppice there was no need to go further afield. At last, when their sack was fairly bulging with dead game, they took their departure. Twice during the next three nights did the gang of poachers return, and each time went home with a score or more of long-tails. Tompkins at last began to miss his birds at feeding-time, and to suspect that something was wrong. Walnut and I sat secure in our retreat overhead, and jeered at the man’s utter stupidity. Why, even if he had no nose for the brimstone, of which the whole place fairly reeked, there were great footprints all over the place telling their story in large type to anyone who had eyes! Yet the keeper absolutely walked over them without looking at them. The very idea of poachers never seemed to occur to him. I verily believe he thought that we had something to do with the disappearance of his precious pheasants, for as he left the coppice he fired at and killed a poor young cousin of ours. The leaves had begun to fall once more, when one day the pompous little fat man accompanied Tompkins through the coppice. They stopped in the glade below us, and it was evident the new tenant was uneasy. He began peering and pointing, and questioning the keeper as if he were only half satisfied. ‘Oh, they’re all right, sir,’ replied the keeper hastily, in answer to his questions. ‘You see, sir, they’ve got so big now they don’t need the grain. They’re round in the bracken finding their own feed.’ The master swallowed his story like a thrush swallowing a worm. Indeed, he was evidently rather pleased, for he thought the birds would be wild and strong on the wing for next day. That same night I was wakened by gunshots. Never before had I heard a gun fired at night, and the sound was most alarming. I thought at first that the firing was at a distance, but just as I looked out the darkness was lit by a flash quite close at hand. The report was, however, strangely slight. As a matter of fact, the guns were loaded with reduced charges. Immediately at the report down flopped a pheasant to the ground. The poacher gang were at work, and as time was short were shooting the pheasants as they roosted. Pop, pop, pop! The pheasants were falling at the rate of one a minute. There would be very few left for our stout friend at the Hall and his swell city friends next day. Two sacks were full. ‘Just a dozen more,’ we heard one of them say.