"Poacher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the roadside, the man whose face was blackened with powder, apparently because he was unable to bear transportation. He died in about half an hour after. On examining the corpse, it proved to be that of a profligate boor in the neighbourhood, a person notorious as a poacher and—smuggler. We I received many messages of congratulation from the neighbouring families, and it was generally allowed that a few such instances of spirited resistance would greatly check the presumption of these lawless ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... After this I put on the best coat and hat I had, feeling that as an Englishman it was my duty to look decent on such an occasion, washed, brushed my hair—with me a ceremony without meaning, for it always sticks up—and slipped a loaded Smith & Wesson revolver into my inner poacher pocket. Then I started out to see the fun, and avoiding the groups of surly-looking Boers, mingled with the crowd that I saw was gathering in front of a long, low building with a broad stoep, which I supposed, rightly, to be one ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... paid magistrates in London, and the pay, according to the prevalent system, was provided by fees, the new officials became known as 'trading justices,' and their salaries, as Fielding tells us, were some of the 'dirtiest money upon earth.' The justices might perhaps be hard upon a poacher (as, indeed, the game laws became one of the great scandals of the system), or liable to be misled by a shrewd attorney; but they were on the whole regarded as the natural and creditable representatives of legal ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... letter says 'all the prisoners.' You don't seriously tell me that anyone wants a photograph to identify Poacher Tresize, whom I've committed a score of times if I've committed him once? And perhaps you'll explain to me this further demand for a 'Composite Photograph' of all the prisoners, male and female. A 'Composite ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and is mistaken for a poacher by the naval party, who press-gang the poachers. When they reach America, Nic is still hardly conscious, and not capable of much work. All the less able poachers are then sold by the ship to an American slave dealer, who sells them to ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... and the name of J. Larkins soon after appeared in the Gazette as one of his Majesty's justices of the peace for the county; pretty much in the same spirit in which a country gentleman converts the greatest poacher in his neighbourhood ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... river-bank is lined with rushes, and in one place I saw the prongs of antlers shaking the elders. I sent a shrill whistle and a stick that way, and out ran four fine deer that loped gracefully across the turf. The sight brought my poacher instincts to the surface, but I bottled them, and trudged on until I came to the little church that stands at the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... the sinister gloom of the trees, either of men or cattle; not even a poacher had been there snaring elves for over a hundred years. You did not trespass twice in the dells of the gnoles. And, apart from the things that were done there, the trees themselves were a warning, and did not wear the wholesome look of those that ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... the blind. The scarcity of animal life of all descriptions, man and mosquitoes alone excepted, is a standing wonder to the traveller; the sportsman must toil many a weary mile to get a shot at boar, or deer, or pheasant; and the plough of the farmer and the trap of the poacher, who works in and out of season, threaten to exterminate all wild creatures; unless, indeed, the Government should, as they threatened in the spring of 1869, put in force some adaptation of European game-laws. But they are lukewarm in the matter; a little hawking on a duck-pond ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... animals give the people trouble enough, and amongst these may be mentioned the lynx and the wolverine, or glutton, each of which will make his supper off a sheep or a goat if he gets the chance. Of the two the lynx is perhaps the worse poacher, and his proverbial sharpness renders him difficult to catch. Not so the glutton, who, if he succeeds in crawling through a hole in the fence of a sheepfold, stuffs himself so full that he cannot get out again. I think that most of us would rather be called lynx-eyed than ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... rather a louder and quicker way than that in which she had been speaking. "Remember, Job Gregson is a notorious poacher and evildoer, and you really are not responsible for what goes on at ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... meat as an egg, and a fresh-laid one." All this he tells John Murray, and concludes with the assurance, "Borrow will lay you golden eggs, and hatch them after the ways of Egypt; put salt on his tail and secure him in your coop, and beware how any poacher coaxes him with 'raisins' or reasons out of the ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... began to make a few good friends. Several magistrates for the county signed a paper for him, stating that they knew him to be a naturalist, and no poacher; and on presenting this paper to the gamekeepers, he was generally allowed to pursue his researches wherever he liked, and shoot any birds or animals he needed for his new museum. Soon after his return from Aberdeen, ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... connoisseur in man-traps and spring-guns and such articles, collecting them from all his neighbors. He knew the histories of all these—which gin had broken a man's leg, which gun had killed a man. That one, I remember his saying, had been set by a game-keeper in the track of a notorious poacher; but the keeper, forgetting what he had done, went that way himself, received the charge in the lower part of his body, and died of the wound. I don't like them here, but I've never yet given directions for them to be taken away." She added, playfully, "Man-traps are ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the hypocrite! If you're lamed for life, as I hope to God you are, it's because you've got a bullet in the leg—which is what any one hands out to a poacher." ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... rearing possessed so few advantages as did that of Shakespeare, having written the plays attributed to him. This is really the strong point in the whole discussion. All other arguments are subordinate. It is admitted that it does seem impossible for the poacher and wild country lad to become the poet pre-eminent in English literature. But this question is not to be decided by a priori reasoning. The genius displayed in the dramatic works under consideration is little less than miraculous. This all concede. Now, history has shown ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... are so delightfully ignorant of the ways of our sex, and I for one heartily wish you might always remain so! But we men are proverbially selfish-and we like to consider cleverness, or 'genius' if you will, as our own exclusive property. We hate the feminine poacher on our particular preserves! We consider that women were made to charm and to amuse us—not to equal us. Do you see? When a woman is clever—perhaps cleverer than we are—she ceases to be amusing—and ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... up and greeted us, and said he'd been having a stroll through the heather before he went to bed. I gied him a cigar—the last I had, too, but I was too relieved to care for that. We walked along wi' him, and bade him gude nicht at the end of the road that led to his steading. But the poacher was not grateful, for he sent the dogs into one of the farmer's corn fields as soon as he was oot ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... scarcely drawn his knife from his pocket, while looking about him with the poacher's unquiet glance, when he uttered a low cry, ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... "Probably a poacher," said Stafford after a moment. "I can't imagine Pinto using a gun. Besides, I don't think he carries one. What did he throw ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... duty? Curse your impudence, sir. Your duty was to keep off my grounds. Talk of duty to me! Why—why—why, ye misbegotten poacher, ye'll be teaching me my A B C next! Roarin' like a bull in the bushes down there! Boys? Boys? Boys? Keep your boys at home, then! I'm not responsible for your boys! But I don't believe it—I don't ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... ever discovered his father, he should find him all that was good; but the colonel had, for many years, not only given up all hope of ever finding his son, but almost every desire to do so. He had thought that, if still alive, he must be a gipsy vagabond—a poacher, a liar, a thief—like those among whom he would have been brought up. From such a discovery, no happiness could be looked for; only annoyance, humiliation, and trouble. To find his son, then, all that he could wish for—a gentleman, a most promising young officer, the man, ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... and address Uncle Cornish. I believe he used to be the most thieving old ruffian of a poacher in this county." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... distance was opened and shut, as if to admit the tired labourer to his home; but that sounded very far away. A stealthy, creeping, cranching sound among the crisp fallen leaves of the forest, beyond the garden, seemed almost close at hand. Margaret knew it was some poacher. Sitting up in her bed-room this past autumn, with the light of her candle extinguished, and purely revelling in the solemn beauty of the heavens and the earth, she had many a time seen the light noiseless leap of the poachers over the garden-fence, their quick tramp across the dewy moonlit lawn, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... if his attention is called to the skilful way in which Kingsley handles his plot. It is high art to throw into the early part of the story the conversation between the keeper and Grimes. It shows that Grimes is a poacher and known to be one. The keeper is inclined to wink at the offense, but still he feels that a warning is necessary. Nothing more is said about poaching till much later, where Tom, the Water Baby, sees Grimes ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... these amusements and had never hesitated to express his opinion of them in terms which were intelligible even to her vanity. From the days when they had played together in the park she had dreaded his honesty and feared his judgments. "You're such a poacher, Sylvia," he told her once, "such an inveterate, diabolical Fly-by-Night, Will-o'-the-Wisp poacher. I sometimes think you'd condescend to take a shot at me if you didn't know that I'm fair game. But you ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... Captain," said Billington putting his hand to his face with an unabashed laugh. "It was a poacher"— ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... Trundleben deserves to get the sack for this. A poacher from the wilds of Warwickshire. I heard all about him. He got after ...
— Plays of Near & Far • Lord Dunsany
... BUTIFER, noted hunter, poacher and smuggler, living in the village hard by Grenoble, where Dr. Benassis located, during the Restoration. When the doctor arrived in the country, Butifer drew a bead on him, in a corner of the forest. Later, however, he became entirely ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... John, as we have said, had divided their time between their visit to Bourg and their preparations for the morrow's hunt. From morn until noon they were to beat the woods; from noon till evening they were to hunt the boar. Michel, that devoted poacher, confined to his chair for the present with a sprain, felt better as soon as the question of the hunt was mooted, and had himself hoisted on a little horse that was used for the errands of the house. Then he sallied forth to collect the beaters from Saint-Just and Montagnac. He, being unable ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... like an Indian from behind a hemlock, a Spanish sailor, a marlingspike in his hand, was seen, who made what seemed an imperfect gesture towards the balcony, but immediately as if alarmed by some advancing step along the deck within, vanished into the recesses of the hempen forest, like a poacher. ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... of a penny whistle and a child's drum taken from a toyshop in a wrecked French town. I remember in India, in a cholera camp, where the men were suffering very badly, the band of the Tenth Lincolns started a regimental sing-song and went on with that queer, defiant tune, "The Lincolnshire Poacher." It was their regimental march that the men had heard a thousand times. There was nothing in it—nothing except all England, all the East Coast, all the fun and daring and horse play of young ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was a wholesale poulterer, and one of the great unpaid. Not that we mean by this expression to insinuate that the retail poulterers did not pay him for what they had: we merely mean to say, that the preserve-worshiping, springgun-setting, poacher-committing baronet administered justice for nothing; and with reverence be it spoken, that was quite as much as it was worth. The worthy baronet was a most active magistrate, peculiarly acute in matters of summary conviction; and thinking it a great pity that any rogue should escape, or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... by poachers are taught to keep out of sight and avoid keepers and such-like folk. They know as well as the poacher himself the nature of their trade, and that the utmost secrecy must be observed. To see them trotting demurely down the road you would never think them capable of doing anything wrong. A wave of ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... companion, his withered face aflame—"a world of robbers, and of rapine! Not a single Tom, Dick, and Harry in these parts that doesn't think himself my equal and more. Not a single tenant on my estate that doesn't try at every point to take advantage of his landlord! Not a single tramp or poacher that doesn't covet my goods—that wouldn't murder me if he could, and sleep like a baby afterward. I tell you, sir, we shall see a jacquerie in England, before we are through with these ideas that ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... banqueted and lauded; but they would hang him, now, if they could get him. In England the natural enemy of the rabbit is detested and persecuted; in the Bluff region the natural enemy of the rabbit is honored, and his person is sacred. The rabbit's natural enemy in England is the poacher, in Bluff its natural enemy is the stoat, the weasel, the ferret, the cat, and the mongoose. In England any person below the Heir who is caught with a rabbit in his possession must satisfactorily explain how it got there, or he will suffer fine and imprisonment, together with extinction of his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... our English gentry have inherited from their Norman ancestry, of game to man. You had come unintentionally as an intruder into a rich preserve much haunted by poachers, and exposed yourself to the deadly mark of a spring-gun, which had not the wit to distinguish between a harmless traveller and a poacher. At least, such is our conclusion; for our old friend here, (who luckily for you is a great rambler in the woods,) when the report drew him to the spot, found you insensible, ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... be yours, you consummate villain?" asked Christian; "would you be as cruel a husband as you are an immoral bachelor? That usually happens; the bolder a poacher one has been, the more intractable a gamekeeper one becomes. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... breaking the law; and the habit of breaking even an unreasonable law tends to make men altogether lawless. However absurd a tariff may be, a smuggler is but too likely to be a knave and a ruffian. How ever oppressive a game law may be, the transition is but too easy from a poacher to a murderer. And so, though little indeed can be said in favour of the statutes which imposed restraints on literature, there was much risk that a man who was constantly violating those statutes would not be a man of high honour and rigid ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a natural step from the pheasant to the poacher; he was not aware that he took it at the prompting of the Terror; and he bewailed the degeneracy of the British rustic, his slow reversion to the type of neolithic man, owing to the fact that the towns drained the villages of all the intelligent. The skilful poacher ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... quarry at a place said to be "Taverna," two hours' distance from Pozzonegro. Profiting by our stay here, I got on a mule this morning, without telling any one, and guided by a tall scamp of a fellow with legs like a deer—true type of a Corsican poacher or smuggler, his thick, red pipe in his mouth, his gun in a bandoleer—I went to Taverna. After a fearful progress across cracked rocks and bogs, past abysses of unsoundable depths—on the very edges of which my mule maliciously walked as though to mark them out with her shoes—we arrived, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... 277., v. Monkleigh, he gives the traditional account of Hankford's death (anno 1422), which represents the judge, in doubt of his safety, and mistrusting the sequel of the matter, to have committed suicide by requiring his park-keeper to shoot at him when under the semblance of a poacher: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... he said. "The hut is mine. I found two odd sections in the last barge-load. Any poacher who knew his job would burn the feathers when he cooked the bird. You needn't start to explain about your fool N.C.O., who made a mistake. I keep that sort of N.C.O. myself. If I get an official inquiry about this hut I shall send ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... in this case, Thenardier was one of those men who understand best, with the most profundity and in the most modern fashion, that thing which is a virtue among barbarous peoples and an object of merchandise among civilized peoples,—hospitality. Besides, he was an admirable poacher, and quoted for his skill in shooting. He had a certain cold and tranquil laugh, which ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... MONGRELS rush forward, all eager to tell, How their masters they serve, and in what they excel; Each follow'd or Pedlar, or Tinker, or Gipsy, And watch'd o'er the goods, while their masters got tipsy. The POACHER'S-DOG trembling, and all in a fright, Then whisper'd, he follow'd his master by night; He never gave tongue, he safely could say, And not telling tales, slunk slyly away. "Stop a moment, dear Sir, and look not so rueful, But hearken to me who'm the Dog for a Truffle; Though your body be ...
— The Council of Dogs • William Roscoe
... has just come in.] Forester Seidel has nabbed a poacher again. He'll be taken to the detention prison to-morrow. There's an officer with style about him. If I hadn't had my misfortune, I could have been a head forester to-day. I'd go after ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... lofty Justice Hall, with its one chair of authority, high-backed and wickered, once the terror of luckless poacher, or self-forgetful maiden—so common since, that bats have roosted ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Life. Memories Grave and Gay. Life of Danton. A Pocketful of Sixpences. The Romance of a Proconsul (Sir George Grey). A Book about Roses. Random Reminiscences. The London Police Courts. The Amateur Poacher. The Bancrofts. At the Works. Mexico as I Saw It. Eighteenth Century Vignettes. The Great Andes of the Equator. The Early History of C. J. Fox. Through the Heart of Patagonia. Browning as a Religious Teacher. Life of Tolstoy. Paris to New York. Life ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... traversed by lean pigs and rough cattle, broad copse-like hedges, small and irregular fields of couch, amidst which straggled the stalks of some smothered cereal; these with gipsy encampments and the occasional sound of the poacher's gun from woods and thickets around were the characteristics ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... working sometimes when I could,—though that warn't as often as you may think, till you put the question whether you would ha' been over-ready to give me work yourselves,—a bit of a poacher, a bit of a laborer, a bit of a wagoner, a bit of a haymaker, a bit of a hawker, a bit of most things that don't pay and lead to trouble, I got to be a man. A deserting soldier in a Traveller's ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... unless the 'findings' of the latter at the close of the day are equal to the wages of twenty men, there is no increase of capital to the country, no gain upon the whole. Then the man who was lucky at one time, was unlucky at another—like a poacher who snares three hares in a night, but does not snare another for a week, while he has been unable to work during the day, and, in the end, his losses have counterbalanced his gains. Then if this phantom had proved a reality, all the mines and mills within ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... our own corral. One had been successfully removed, and the other trussed-up carcass had been hidden until a good opportunity offered for it to follow suit. I do not wish to leave the impression on the minds of my readers that every man on this part of the coast is a poacher. Far from it. But the majority of the best men were against the reindeer experiment from the moment that the first trouble arose. A new obligation of social life was introduced. This implied restraint in such trifling things as their having to ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... direction that had been indicated to him, and had gone into the thicket, and there he heard words and gasps, which made him suspect a flagrant breach of morality. Advancing, therefore, on his hands and knees, as if to surprise a poacher, he had arrested the couple who were there present, at the very moment when they were going to abandon themselves to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... then, I should shoot him, as a poacher. Why should a hundred horsemen engage in hunting the poor brute down? Bad horseman as I am, I should not mind taking part in a cavalry charge; but hunting is not ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... Smiley. That small, sly old poacher was not there to work; his task was to keep guard. So while the other four undid their bundle of nets, and prepared for a big haul, Smiley moved with the tread of a cat to and fro, watching the prisoner, listening, looking, turning his head this way and that, to detect the ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... to find a poacher!" laughed Ralph; "though there'd be nothing for him to trap here, unless he kept a boat stowed away in the reeds, and took midnight excursions into ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... some friend of Gawdy's—not a relation, because he had none, poor devil! he was the last of his line: kind of spes ultima gentis—must have planned to get hold of Francis's boy and put an end to his line, too. I don't know—it's rather an out-of-the-way thing for an Essex poacher to think of—but, you know, I should say now it looks more as if old Gawdy had managed the job himself. Booh! I hate to think of it! have some ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... not softened till one day little Gainsborough brought home a sketch of the orchard into which the head of a man had thrust itself, painted with great ability. This man was a poacher, and father Gainsborough recognised him by the portrait. There seemed to be utility in art of this kind, and before long the boy found himself ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... nations, where the low degree of mental cultivation favours always the dominance of the passions. But even amongst the most civilised classes in civilised States, life is full of examples of this kind—of men carried away by the violence of their passions, like the poacher of old chained to the stag ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... think so?" answered Edmee. "For my part, I preferred him in his poacher's garb. It suited ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... that burrows, not for any bird that flies, Would I lose his large sound council, miss his keen amending eyes. He is bailiff, woodman, wheelwright, field-surveyor, engineer, And if flagrantly a poacher—'tain't for me ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... was a dark, fierce-looking fellow of about five and twenty, with a spare, wiry frame, brilliant black eyes, and very white teeth—which were long and pointed like the fangs of a young wolf. He looked as if he might be a brigand, poacher, smuggler, thief, or assassin—all of which he had been indeed by turns. He was dressed like a Spanish peasant, and in the red woollen girdle wound several times around his waist was stuck a formidable knife, called in Spain a navaja. The desperadoes who make use of these terrible ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... my supporters," laughed Robert; "a bit of a poacher and a bit of a pub-loafer, but he's on the ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... love the brutal bird who had teased another out of her life, but I certainly looked for an improvement in his temper now that he had no one to vex his sight. I looked in vain. He was more savage, more of a tramp and poacher, more of a scold, than ever. He even went so far as to huff at the sparrows outside the window. He never entered into the feelings of his neighbors in any way; when every other bird in the room was excited, alarmed, or disturbed, he alone remained perfectly unconcerned, ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... people below were not Highlanders, for in the face of the man who spoke I was able at a glance to distinguish the hard-set lineaments of the villain Duncan M'Rae. This man had been everything in his time—soldier, school-teacher, poacher, thief. He was abhorred by his own clan, and feared by every one. Even the school children, if they met him on the road, would run back to ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... tour, so rich in its results, Scott returned in time to attend the autumnal assizes at Jedburgh, on which occasion he made his first appearance as counsel in a criminal court; and had the satisfaction of helping a veteran poacher and sheep-stealer to escape through some of the meshes of the law. "You're a lucky {p.199} scoundrel," Scott whispered to his client, when the verdict was pronounced. "I'm just o' your mind," quoth the desperado, "and I'll send ye a maukin[111] the morn, man." I am not sure whether it was at ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... them; and, to Tom's surprise, he and Grimes chatted together all the way quite pleasantly. He did not know that a keeper is only a poacher turned outside in, and a poacher a keeper ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... 'im not to shoot at 'im because he 'ad a 'ole in his pocket, and Bill Chambers, when it pointed at 'im, up and told 'im to let somebody else 'ave a turn. The only one that didn't flinch was Bob Pretty, the biggest poacher and the greatest rascal in Claybury. He'd been making fun o' the tricks all along, saying out loud that he'd seen 'em ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... always rewarded the Good and punished the Bad, why was Dearest so unhappy, and drunken Poacher Iggulsby so very ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... and not thought she was doing anything very wrong after all, but that wasn't his idea in the least. Without more ado he laid his whip on Martin's shoulders, and ordered him off the grounds, much as he would a poacher. Martin, the strongest of the two by far, would have knocked him down if Miss Ellen had not interfered and begged Martin to go away, declaring that if fault there was it was entirely hers. Martin did go, swearing that he would have the satisfaction one gentleman ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... vacated. He afterwards told Lord Bute that he had brought, without the knowledge of any one in the house, two seismic instruments, but that they recorded nothing, and that during the night he heard a sound as of a gun being fired outside the house. This he attributed to some poacher unknown, an explanation which seems hardly probable, as at this time of year there is nothing to shoot except rabbits. One never hears of a poacher shooting rabbits, and in any case, he would hardly do so in the immediate neighbourhood ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... that the master can have no "visitors" who are not gentlemen. I must admit that Anselo's dress was not what could be called gentlemanly. From his hat to his stout shoes he looked the impenitent gypsy and sinful poacher, unaffected and natural. There was a cutaway, sporting look about his coat which indicated that he had grown to it from boyhood "in woodis grene." He held a heavy-handled whip, a regular Romany tchupni or chuckni, which ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... make up for the time he had lost. If he could but reach the sheriff's house before the boys did, he could have them arrested and collect the informer's fee, instead of being himself arrested and fined as a poacher. It was a prize worth racing for! And, moreover, there were two elks, worth twenty-five dollars apiece, buried in the snow under logs. These also would belong to the victor! The poacher dashed ahead, straining every nerve, and reached safely the foot of the ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... looked upon as a superior man. He certainly believed it himself: hence he was very impatient at being confined to so narrow a sphere of action, and thought his brilliant ability wasted upon the prosecution of a chicken-thief or a poacher. But his almost desperate efforts to secure a better office had always been unsuccessful. In vain he had enlisted a host of friends in his behalf. In vain he had thrown himself into politics, ready to serve any ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... as well as its predatory skill, makes it an extremely frequent and annoying poacher on the poultry-yards of the backwoods settlers, especially in the hill districts of the Southern States, where the climate and the abundance of game appear to have developed them to an uncommon size ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... game, Aby. The game laws here are excellently put in execution. Hares are as plenty as rabbits in a warren, partridges as tame as our dove-house pigeons, and pheasants that seem as if they would come and feed out of your hand. For no scoundrel poacher dare molest them. If he did, I am not certain whether the lord of the manor could not hang him up ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... town; the greasy scoundrel who congregates with his mates at street corners; the unspeakable dogs who prowl at night in London and snatch their prey in lonely thoroughfares; the "jolly" gangs of young men who play cards till dawn in provincial club-rooms; even the slouching poacher who passes his afternoons in humorous converse at the ale-house—they are all idlers, and they all form bad company for anybody who comes within range of their influences. We are nearing the point of our demonstration. The youth is at first attracted by the charm of ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... Hopley, the gamekeeper; his daughter Polly; the school Cook; Lomax, the school drill-sergeant; Magglin, a ne'er-do-well and poacher; Dr Browne, the headmaster, and Mrs Browne; Rebble and Hasnip, ushers at the school; Burr's mother, and his uncle, Colonel Seaborough; and the local big landowner, General ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... deuce is the matter?" he puffed. "Oh! it is you, Giles, is it? What are you doing, sir, looking like that, all covered with blood and mud? Has a poacher ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... poach that I may live to—poach again, sir. I am, at once, a necessitous poacher, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... barren for ever. There is, for instance, a dark-looking piece of ground devoid of verdure in the parish of Kirdford, Sussex. Local tradition says that this was formerly green, but the grass withered gradually away soon after the blood of a poacher, who was shot there, trickled down on the place. But perhaps the most romantic tale of this kind was that known as the "Field of Forty Footsteps." A legendary story of the period of the Duke of Monmouth's Rebellion describes a mortal conflict which took place between two ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... Buckinghamshire Players: for they were acting their own life with just that rise into exaggeration which is the transition from life to art. But all the time I was mesmerised by the moon; I saw all these men and women as enchanted things. The poacher shot pheasants; the policeman tracked pheasants; the wife hid pheasants; they were all (especially the policeman) as true as death. But there was something more true to death than true to life about it all: the figures were frozen with a magic frost of sleep or ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... poaching, must endeavour to procure eggs that have been laid a couple of days—those that are quite new-laid are so milky that, take all the care you can, your cooking of them will seldom procure you the praise of being a prime poacher; you must have fresh eggs, ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... from the kilt and the sofa said Hobbes in conclusion, 'Finally Philip must hunt for that home of the probable poacher, Hid in the Braes of Lochaber, the Bothie of what-did-he-call-it. Hopeless of you and of us, of gillies and marquises hopeless, Weary of ethic and logic, of rhetoric yet more weary, There shall he, smit by the charm of a lovely potatoe-uprooter, Study ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... in Mr. Capulet's orchard. Ten minutes more, Clarissa, and I vanish amidst the woods of Arden, through which I came like a poacher in order to steal upon you unawares by that little gate. And now, my darling, since we have wasted almost all our time in fencing with words, let us be reasonable. Promises such as you speak of are pledges ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... necessity for his one day thinking seriously about marriage; it being in a measure almost as inevitable a termination of the free-and-easy career of his single life as transportation for seven years is to that of a poacher. "You cannot go on, sir," said I, "trespassing forever upon your neighbors' preserves; you must be apprehended sooner or later; therefore, I think, the better way is ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... said that all them footling little beasts were a-listening to 'em, and they told him all about it. I remember he told me more about the woods than I know myself—and I reckon I could teach his business to any gamekeeper or poacher in England. I don't say as how he knew the difference between a stoat and a weasel—he didn't. A cock-pheasant and a hen-partridge would have been the same to him. But the spirit of it—the meaning ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Leicester's regiment; the name was a common one enough; but it was no part of the poet's experience "to trail a pike in Flanders." Directly or indirectly, he was on the high road to London, and Sir Thomas Lucy was to find his claim to immortality in the pursuit of a young poacher and in the poacher's creation of Mr. Justice Shallow of Gloucestershire, whose foolishness, suggested in "Henry IV." (Part II., Act iii. sc. 2), is still further emphasised in the "Merry Wives of Windsor," where he figures as one who has come to make a Star Chamber ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... dozen, and the cutter 'Domain' 400 dozen. The oyster beds were soon destroyed, and when in course of a few years I was appointed inspector of fisheries at Port Albert I could never find a single dozen oysters to inspect, although I was informed that a certain reverend poacher near the Caledonian Canal could obtain a bucket full of them ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... to fall in moral esteem, and in the next century he was included among the criminal categories. No doubt, too, as the tender of flocks was often an Arab raider, the shepherd had become a dishonest poacher on other men's preserves. The attitude towards him was, further, an outcome of the deepening antagonism between the schoolmen and the peasantry. But even then it was by no means invariable. One of the most famous of Rabbis, Akiba, who died a martyr in 135 C.E., was not only a shepherd, but he ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... with one of his men," said Frojac, "an old comrade of mine, who did not guess that I was of your troop. I told him that I had given up righting and settled down as a poacher. He says that it is well known to the governor's soldiers that the governor has come south to catch you. He declares that the governor knows the exact ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... who could be reached by hands. His thoughts glanced at all the neighbours who had made any remarks, or asked any questions which he might now regard as a ground of suspicion. There was Jem Rodney, a known poacher, and otherwise disreputable: he had often met Marner in his journeys across the fields, and had said something jestingly about the weaver's money; nay, he had once irritated Marner, by lingering at the fire when he called to light his pipe, instead of going about his business. ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... "Sink you for a poacher!" he cried, as Copley Banks passed over the bulwarks. "I will drub you within an inch of your life, and that inch also! What mean you by fishing in ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Patrol doesn't go to Khatka. The natives handle their own criminals. Personally, I'd cheerfully take a ninety-nine-year sentence in the Lunar mines in place of what the Khatkans dish out to a poacher they net!" ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... or, the Fortune-teller: with some account of Dreams, Omens, and Conjurers. Being Part III. of Black Giles the Poacher. ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... under the canopy of heaven—Zack the gregarious, who in his days of roaming the country, before he was fettered to an office stool, had "cottoned" to every species of rustic vagabond, from a traveling tinker to a resident poacher—at once declared that he would sleep in the offered bed that very night, by way of showing himself worthy of his host's assistance and regard, if worthy of nothing else. Greatly relieved by this plain declaration, Mat crossed his legs luxuriously ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... pheasant preserve, and though two of them died within the month, two within the year, and two are now in the workhouse—one a mere idiot, and the other a madman—both shadows—so terribly were their bodies mauled, and so sorely were their skulls fractured;—yet the poacher was taken, tried, hulked; and there he sits now, sunning himself on a bank by the edge of the wood whose haunts he must thread no more—for the keepers were grim bone-breakers enough in their way—and when they had gotten him on his back, one gouged ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... grin on Gleave's poacher-like face when Joan gave him a friendly nod. And it was with a momentary spasm of uneasiness that she asked herself what he and her grandmother knew. It was evident that they had something up their sleeves. But when, after a tea during ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... stand by the ditch with their hands in their pockets sucking a stale pipe. They would rather lounge there in the bitterest north-east wind that ever blew than do a single hour's honest work. Blackguard is written in their faces. The poacher needs some courage, at least; he knows a penalty awaits detection. These fellows have no idea of sport, no courage, and no skill, for their tricks are simplicity itself, nor have they the pretence of utility, for they ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... this time of day to distress my tenants, because they are unfortunate, and cannot make regular payments: I wonder that Barns should think me capable of such oppression — As for Higgins, the fellow is a notorious poacher, to be sure; and an impudent rascal to set his snares in my own paddock; but, I suppose, he thought he had some right (especially in my absence) to partake of what nature seems to have intended for common use — you may threaten him in my name, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... down to the stream. Now, I had the angler's hatred of otters, which abounded in these waters. Many a time had I seen a prime fish lying dead on the banks with a single bite taken out of the shoulder, and I looked upon the otter as the common poacher of the neighbourhood. I went to the help of Selta, for the dog was crouched down ready to spring upon the otter when it should run out from behind the large stone where ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... know he had been a poacher," asserted Janice, as she contemptuously held up and surveyed at arms-length the completed shirt. Then she laid it aside with another, and sighed a weary, "Heigh-ho, those are done. Here I have to work my fingers ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... added to her lowly lot, and attracted more admiration than her father wished, or she could understand; while the frank and bold spirit of Thomas Acton exposed him to the perilous friendship of Ben Burke the poacher, and divers ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... population, of great waves of friendship and good feeling which all the trade rivalries and hostile tariffs of a half century have failed to stem. The pot shot of some fishery patrol across the nets of a poacher on the wrong side of the international line fails to excite anybody. Even if some flag lunatic full of whisky climbs a flagstaff and tears down the other country's national emblem—the boundary does not go on fire. The authorities cool such alcoholic patriotism with a water hose, ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... your riding and shooting. No one knew of your literary tastes. I don't mind telling you that Mount Rorke often suspected you of being a bit of a poacher." ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... disastrous than possible visits from a male poacher are the incursions of a large flat sea-fish, known at Arcachon as the there, with us the ray. This gentleman has a colossal appetite for oysters. Scorning to deal with them by the dozen, he devours ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... having again cautioned the clergyman to be secret, not without some obscure menaces of danger to himself, if he failed, the two gentlemen left him, and hurried down, as fast as they could go, to a small alehouse in the village, where they had left their horses. In a few minutes, a well known poacher, whose very frequent habitation was the jail or the cage, was seen to issue forth from the door of the alehouse, then to lead a very showy looking horse from the stable, and then to mount him and take his way over the hill. The poacher had never ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... have been any different? Those bitter, coarse, feminine tongues which gave her the name of evil, and so led her to openly announce that, as she had the name, she would carry on the game. That is an old country saying, "Bear the name, carry the game." If you have the name of a poacher, then poach; you will be no worse off and you will have the pleasure of the poaching. It is a serious matter, indeed, to give any one a bad name, more especially a ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... lot to say, however. They talked for ten minutes, but the poacher couldn't move the policeman, though he appealed to his friendship and so on. Then Joseph saw a look that he never had seen afore in the little man's eyes and was startled, but not afeared. For a minute Teddy glared like a devil in the moonlight, and an awful evil ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... or some defect in their moral character, how many are there who would have been very differently placed to-day had their surroundings been otherwise? Charles Kingsley puts this very abruptly where he makes the Poacher's widow say, when addressing the Bad Squire, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... woodland rivulet. But, all the same, he knew perfectly well what he was about, and how to catch the large, fat, dark-coloured, speckled beauties that haunted the stream— the only way, in fact, unless he had descended to the poacher-like practice of ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... mystery, One can't tell how it e'er got in or out; Therefore the present piece of natural history I leave to those who are fond of solving doubt; And merely state, though not for the Consistory, Lord Henry was a Justice, and that Scout The constable, beneath a warrant's banner, Had bagged this poacher upon ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... it—to rob that great good-looking fellow of his mistress, and to show him that a Major with a portly stomach and a brain made to become Mayor of Paris, though he is a grandfather, is not to have his mistress tickled away by a poacher without turning the tables." ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... of medical treatment, and almost indifferent about the robbery; as though his passion were spent, and he were tired of the subject. However, the police were alert. The man whom they had taken up was a squatter in the forest, notorious as a poacher and thief, and his horse and cart answered to Phoebe's description of the shadow. He had been arrested when returning with them from the small seaport on the other side of the forest in the next county, and on communicating with the authorities there, search at a dealer's ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that the "thinking bayonet" is by no means to be decried. A man can no more be a good soldier without intelligence and aptitude for his profession than he can be a successful poacher or a skilful jockey. But it is possible, in considering the value of an armed force, to rate too highly the natural qualities of the individual in the ranks. In certain circumstances, especially in irregular warfare, where each man fights for his own hand, they doubtless play a conspicuous ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... employed to defend poachers: have you been careful to impress upon them the enormity of their practices?" It appeared in a wrangling conversation that the magistrates saw little moral difference between poaching and being a poacher's professional defender without lecturing him on his wickedness: but they admitted with reluctance, that there was a legal distinction; and the brain of N^3 could no further go. This is nearly fifty years ago; and Westernism was not quite extinct. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... know a gentleman in the neighbourhood called William Busfeild Ferrand?" "Yes, sir," replied I. "He lives at St. Ives; I know him very well." "Have you (queried the Colonel with a merry twinkling in his eye) ever had any of his hares and rabbits?" "No," replied I, "I'm not a poacher." "Well," remarked the Colonel, "I think you will do well; perhaps it's the best thing you ever did. But of these Sheffielders I have no high opinion; they're a bad sample of soldiers indeed, and if I had my way I would petition Government to have no Sheffielders at all in ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... hare was sold, being unfortunately taken many months after with a quantity of game upon him, was obliged to make his peace with the squire, by becoming evidence against some poacher. And now Black George was pitched upon by him, as being a person already obnoxious to Mr Western, and one of no good fame in the country. He was, besides, the best sacrifice the higgler could make, as he had supplied him with no game ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... country, near my former house, told me that he saw him one day hiding behind a hedge with a rabbit in his mouth. Once no longer provided with food, he, accustomed to all the sweets of a Cat's existence, turned poacher, taking toll of the farm-yards round about my old home. I heard no more of him. He came to a bad end, no doubt: he had become a robber and must have met ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... a poacher," said Vijal, sadly; "yet I am glad it was you, for I can help you. I will help you ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... friends,' said the agent: 'his lordship has offered a reward of L500;—L500,' said the agent, slowly repeating the sum, 'for the apprehension of the notorious poacher, Horace Hunter, who has threatened his life, and will visit with his gravest displeasure any one who harbors him, or in any way countenances him; if a tenant he shall be discharged; and Mrs. Ally here, refuses to let me place the notice in her bar, thereby showing great disregard ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... of the unexpected salute, the crack of the echoing thong, shook the fine nerves of a fanciful lover, and Ferdinand looked so confused, that if the honest yeoman had only stopped to observe him, the passenger might have really been excused for mistaking him for a poacher, at the least, by his ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... shave and wash himself, Renardet went on with the moral inspection of all the inhabitants of Carvelin. After two hours' discussion, their suspicions were fixed on three individuals who had hitherto borne a shady reputation—a poacher named Cavalle, a fisher for trails and crayfish named Paquet, ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... was not quite like her uncle, or Mr. Forester, or Dr. Morison. Surely her father was not a rough-spoken man like this! Besides, would she not have known him at once? No; probably her first theory was the right one, and this was some poacher or thief—and yet he did not seem quite like a bad man either. It was a mystery, and she wished that Blanche or Alan ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... life might exist for the wives. Even today the wives might be resting their feet under the bridge tables, secure in the consciousness that no bobbed haired young poacher was daring to dance with their husbands, if they had just let prohibitions enough alone—if they had only not been swept away by the high sport of gossiping about our Wild Young People, which struck the country in the summer of 1920. This gossip was an intrinsic ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... the 19th century Bourne, being much employed at Harriseahead, near Bemersley, was shocked at the general lack of the means of grace, and he endeavoured in 1800 and 1801 to promote a revivalist movement. Daniel Shubotham, a boxer, poacher, and ringleader in wickedness, was brought, through Bourne's influence, to the Saviour, on Christmas day 1800, and with his natural energy of character took up the cause. Matthias Bailey, another of Bourne's old associates was also won over, and cottage ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... my young friend!" she cried, her eyes meanwhile swiftly searching the room. "You're a poacher. ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... of several rare frolics, chance love-affairs, meetings in the woods, and so on, and he feared the priest might have told Reine some unfavorable stories about him. "Ah!" he continued, clenching his fists, "if this old poacher in a cassock has done me an ill turn with you, he will not have much ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... of life or gold, we in England are consistent Mammon worshippers. Woe to the poacher, but the wife beater has only strained a right and may be leniently dealt with; woe to the destroyer of pheasants, but the destruction of peasants is a detail. Thus it is that the great fundamental questions which, because they determine ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... littleness of great men. I like to think that Shakespeare was fond of his glass. I even cling to the tale of that disgraceful final orgie with friend Ben Jonson. Possibly the story may not be true, but I hope it was. I like to think of him as poacher, as village ne'er-do-well, denounced by the local grammar-school master, preached at by the local J. P. of the period. I like to reflect that Cromwell had a wart on his nose; the thought makes me more contented with my own features. ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... simply says that although the mutiny was general, it was wholly the work of a small number of the worse class of prisoners. By worse class he means the most troublesome and refractory out there. The prisoners are not classified according to their original crimes. A poacher who has killed a game keeper, or a smuggler who has killed a revenue officer, may in other respects be a quiet and well conducted man, while men sentenced for comparatively minor offenses may give an immense deal of trouble. I will, however, get a letter written to ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... Richard Boyce's succession to Mellor—when the farmers had been mostly ruined, and half the able-bodied men of Mellor had tramped "up into the smoke," as the village put it, in search of London work—then, out of actual sheer starvation—that very rare excuse of the poacher!—Hurd had gone one night and snared a hare on the Mellor land. Would the wife and mother ever forget the pure animal satisfaction of that meal, or the fearful joy of the next night, when he got three shillings from a local publican for a hare and ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the ghost of old Beales, as goes o' nights and sows tares in his neighbor's wheat—I've often seed 'em in seed time. They do say that Black Ben, the poacher, have riz, and what's more, walked slap through all the squire's steel traps, without springing on 'em. And then there's Bet Hawkey as murdered her own infant—only the poor little babby hadn't learned to walk, and so can't ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... Franklin Dexter had the goodness to call it), was sent in a little too late to be printed with the official account of the celebration. It was written at the suggestion of Dr. Jacob Bigelow, who thought the popular tune "The Poacher's Song" would be a good model for a lively ballad or ditty. He himself wrote the admirable Latin song to be found in the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Bayfield began, coming nearer, while Bryda, with the shield of the old magistrate's chair before her, felt secure, 'madam, I feel like a poacher on trial, you the judge. Listen to a prisoner pleading; I pray you, be merciful. You speak of ruin—the money I claim by right of your respected grandfather it is absolutely necessary I should have. I hold the ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... now to begin Tommy's education, for I judged that, if he had been at home, he would ere then have been getting nightly lessons in the poacher's art. So I procured a small gecko, one of those grey house lizards, with pellets at the ends of their toes, which come down from the roof after the lamps are lit and gorge themselves on the foolish moths ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... of the wood, when whom should he see but Arthur-a-Bland, busily creeping after a graceful deer that browsed alone down the glade. "Now by Saint George and the Dragon!" quoth Robin to himself. "I much fear that yon same fellow is a rascally poacher come after our own and the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... the man was a poacher too Or a Pharisee[A] so bold— I reckon there's more things told than are true, And more things ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... lichen-strewn stone wall and penetrated the thick undergrowth beyond. Hence he had returned, with white face and staring eyes, with the information that great wild dogs dwelt in the thickets. Subsequently the village poacher confirmed this information. He was not exactly loquacious on the subject, but merely hinted that the grounds of Longdean Grange were not salubrious for ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... clownish manners, broad dialect of canny Yorkshire, with a certain cunning cast of the eye,—contracted no doubt by peering through the hedge, to see if the gamekeeper was coming,—all contributed to exhibit him before us, as the very beau ideal of a poacher. ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... falcon, mosstrooper[obs3], bushranger[obs3], Bedouin|!, brigand, freebooter, bandit, thug, dacoit[obs3]; pirate, corsair, viking, Paul Jones|!, buccaneer, buccanier|!; piqueerer|, pickeerer|; rover, ranger, privateer, filibuster; rapparee[obs3], wrecker, picaroon[obs3]; smuggler, poacher; abductor, badger*, bunko man, cattle thief, chor[obs3], contrabandist[obs3], crook, hawk, holdup man, hold-up* [U.S.], jackleg* [obs3][U.S.], kidnaper, rustler , cattle rustler, sandbagger, sea king, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... doctor remained alone in the room of death, where the doctor set to his gruesome task. Outside, Constable Roberts's burly voice could be heard holding forth in the hall upon the fact that he'd been after a poacher on Mr. Jimmeson's estate over to Saltfleet, and wasn't in ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... He could afford to give that daughter of his a good education—good as a young lady gets—and he spends plenty, and I never heard of him owing aught. Of course, he's a queer lot—we know he's a poacher and all that, but he's so skilful about it that we've never been able to catch him. I can't think ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... take the trouble to recollect what they have heard of him, will find him a rather multifarious creature. He is, in truth, a very Protean personage. What is he, in fact? A day-laborer, a woodman, a plowman, a wagoner, a collier, a worker in railroad and canal making, a gamekeeper, a poacher, an incendiary, a charcoal-burner, a keeper of village ale-houses, and Tom-and-Jerrys; a tramp, a pauper, pacing sullenly in the court-yard of a parish-union, or working in his frieze jacket on some parish-farm; a boatman, a road-side ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... 'I'm a practical man and judge things by their results. Look at your Polpeor folk—smugglers all, or the sons of smugglers—a fine upstanding, independent lot as you would wish to see; whereas your poacher nine times out of ten is a sneak, and looks it.' 'Because,' retorted the doctor, but gently, 'your smuggler lives in his own cottage, serves no master, and has public opinion—by which I mean the only public opinion ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... with another boy, Mark, who gets into trouble for being a poacher. Dick peaches on the local smugglers, who imprison him, and he is nearly killed ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... flies?" But as soon as he observed me coming he strode off across the heather. Uncourteous as it seems, I felt so inquisitive that I followed him. But he walked so rapidly, and was so manifestly anxious to shake me off, that I gave up the pursuit. Even if he were a poacher whose conscience smote him for using salmon-roe, I was not "my brother's keeper," nor anybody's keeper. He might "otter" the loch, but how could ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... from outlawry to honesty by the irresistible solicitations of Bladud, and as, in modern times, many an incorrigible poacher makes a first-rate gamekeeper, so the robber-chief became an able head-huntsman under the Hunter-General. The irony of Fate decreed, however, that the man who had once contemplated three wives was not to marry at all. He dwelt ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... calf's substitute, a dish of pork and beans, was put to heat in a pan of water on the gas stove. The coffee-pot was "rastled" under the tap to remove the early morning aroma which clung to the grounds always left to await my attention the following morning. The egg poacher, the toaster, the slab of bacon, and a mince pie, bought an hour before to produce sleep, were brought out and displayed to make a scene like the old days when joy was unconfined, when women were mere theories ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... possible era yet written of. Whatever economies we pursue, political or other, let us see at once that this is the maddest of the uneconomic: partridges killed by our land magnates at, shall we say, a guinea a head, to be retailed in Leadenhall at one shilling and ninepence, with one poacher in limbo for every fifty birds! our poet, maker, creator, gauging ale, and that badly, with no leisure for making or creating, only a little leisure for drinking, and such like beer-barrel avocations! Truly, a cutting of blocks with fine razors while ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... to it. Thus you will find the best of men among the shepherds and labourers freely helping themselves to any wild creature that falls in their way, yet sharing the game-preserver's hatred of the real poacher. The village poacher as a rule is an idle, dissolute fellow, and the sober, industrious, righteous shepherd or ploughman or carter does not like to be put on a level with such a person. But there is no escape from the hard and fast rule in such things, and however open and truthful ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... no flag! She has no license to trade! She's a poacher! She will make a prize worth the taking," added M. Radisson sharply. Then, as if to justify that intent—"As we have no license, we must ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut |
