flew off, leaving his prey behind. He had grasped it in its sides,
driving his sharp claws well in, and the partridge, though unable to
fly, was still alive. The shepherd killed it and put it in his pocket,
and enjoyed it very much when he came to eat it.

From this case, a most innocent form of poaching, he went on to relate
how he had once been able to deprive a cunning poacher and bad man, a
human sparrowhawk, of his quarry.

There were two persons in the village, father and son, he very heartily
detested, known respectively as Old Gaarge and Young Gaarge, inveterate
poachers both. They were worse than the real reprobate who haunted the
public-house and did no work and was not ashamed of his evil ways, for
these two were hypocrites and were outwardly sober, righteous men, who
kept themselves a little apart from their neighbours and were very
severe in their condemnation of other people's faults.

One Sunday morning Caleb was on his way to his ewes folded at a distance
from the village, walking by a hedgerow at the foot of the down, when he
heard a shot fired some way ahead, and after a minute or two a second
shot. This greatly excited his curiosity and caused him to keep a sharp
look-out in the direction the sounds had come from, and by and by he
caught sight of a man walking towards him. It was Old Gaarge in his long
smock-frock, proceeding in a leisurely way towards the village, but
catching sight of the shepherd he turned aside through a gap in the
hedge and went off in another direction to avoid meeting him. No doubt,
thought Caleb, he has got his gun in two pieces hidden under his smock.
He went on until he came to a small field of oats which had grown badly
and had only been half reaped, and here he discovered that Old Gaarge
had been lying in hiding to shoot at the partridges that came to feed.