CHAPTER VII

THE DEER-STEALERS

Deer-stealing on Salisbury Plain--The head-keeper Harbutt--Strange
story of a baby--Found as a surname--John Barter the village
carpenter--How the keeper was fooled--A poaching attack planned--The
fight--Head-keeper and carpenter--The carpenter hides his son--The
arrest--Barter's sons forsake the village


There were other memories of deer-taking handed down to Caleb by his
parents, and the one best worth preserving relates to the head-keeper of
the preserves, or chase, and to a great fight in which he was engaged
with two brothers of the girl who was afterwards to be Isaac's wife.

Here it may be necessary to explain that formerly the owner of
Cranbourne Chase, at that time Lord Rivers, claimed the deer and the
right to preserve and hunt deer over a considerable extent of country
outside of his own lands. On the Wiltshire side these rights extended
from Cranbourne Chase over the South Wiltshire Downs to Salisbury, and
the whole territory, about thirty miles broad, was divided into beats or
walks, six or eight in number, each beat provided with a keeper's lodge.
This state of things continued to the year 1834, when the chase was
"disfranchised" by Act of Parliament.