Wise Saws and Modern Instances, Volume 1 (of 2)Cooper, Thomas
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Wise Saws and Modern Instances, Volume 1 (of 2)
Cooper, Thomas
English fiction -- 19th century; Short stories, English
"Heigho!" said he, "brother poacher! how are you for fun? just stop
and look at me, while I scratch Kiah Dobson's old bull, will ye?"
and off he went along the hedge-row in quest of his new game, while
the gamekeeper and the farmer and his wife stood gazing after him in
astonishment.
Scarcely sooner said than done! Dick came up to the bull as he lay in
the pasture, quietly and unsuspectingly chewing the cud, and Dick began
to scratch the bull. It need hardly be said that if Dick thought this
very funny, the horned beast's thoughts were of another complexion.
The bull rose, blurred, and ran bang upon Dick, goring his ribs,
throwing him up, and, bounding to the other side of the field, left
the scratcher senseless upon the grass, and all before you could have
found breath to say, "Jack Robinson!" had you been looking on, like the
gamekeeper and farmer and dame Dobson.
Nothing in the wide world could have given the gamekeeper greater
pleasure than Dick's overthrow. "Farmer Dobson," said he, "now is the
time to nab the rascal: fetch your wheelbarrow, and we'll put him into
it, and take him away to the next constable's, and he shall put him
into the close-hole, till justice can be had upon him: it will do the
Squire's heart good, I'm sure, to learn that we have noosed the Raven
at last, after he has noosed so many score brace o' game."
Kiah Dobson's heart felt reluctant to assist in imprisoning Dick,
'scapegrace, although he knew him to be: but how could he refuse
compliance with the request of the squire's gamekeeper, for there lay
the hares by the poacher's side? Besides, as Kiah often used to say,
when he related the story in after years, he reflected that although
Dick was so good a logician on the evils of the Game Laws, yet he had
become so outrageously daring in bidding defiance to danger, that he
feared ill would come on it, if a timely check were not given to his
course. So Kiah went and fetched the barrow, and he and the gamekeeper
lifted Dick into it, and away they wheeled him to the next constable's
house. A surgeon attended to Dick's wounds, when he had brought him to
his senses a little; and, the next week, the squire himself, sitting
in judicial state at the hall of Manby, committed Dick to the House of
Correction for six months.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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