“Thank God, that the horrible mystery of that dreadful event is at length cleared up, and that dear Mr. Woodburn is fully cleared from that most insulting, most impossible accusation. Give my kindest love and warmest congratulations to him. And that horrid Scammel! How is it that I never saw that before? That man was the scourge of the woods of the Bullockshed estate, and of other game-preserving estates round. Nobody could take him, and my father came to the conclusion that the keepers did not dare to encounter him. He, therefore, determined to accompany them, and watch with them. Many a dark wild night went he out in the woods with them. Oh, what dreadful nights of anxiety to us! The man conducted his operations with such silence and dexterity, that the game continued to decrease, and yet no trace of him could be discovered. There was no sound of discharge of guns, yet the pheasants went; no crash of hedge, or of forcing a way through bushes or underwood, yet the hares disappeared. It was clear that though they could not discover him, he saw them, for wherever they posted themselves, he was at work in a very different quarter. Did they quit that post, he was there the next night. Did they post watches in half a dozen places at once, he lay still; but as this could not be always done, he was only checked slightly; and even when this was the case, it was found that he was busy on some other property. Distance seemed nothing to him. “At length my father, with three men, came suddenly face to face with this ogre of the night in a deep hollow of the woods, where he had been observed, by his shoe-prints, to cross from one pheasant copse to another. The villain instantly discharged his gun at my father, but fortunately missed; a rare thing with him; yet in this case owing, no doubt, to his sudden surprise. He was raising his piece again to his shoulder, when it was struck from his hands by a blow of the butt-end of the gun of one of the keepers, and then began a most terrible struggle. My father said it was like endeavouring to bind Proteus, or a Bengal tiger. Desperate and Herculean were the struggles of the man. But once down, all threw themselves upon him, and secured him, much as he must have been secured, at last, by your account. Then, they had to convey him to the hall in a cart, and all the way he uttered the most fearful oaths, and vows of vengeance against my father. He was condemned to six months’ labour on the treadmill, and could only just have come out. Poor father, how often did we wish that he would not himself meddle with such fearfully depraved men!