"Poacher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the 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 ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... There came the sudden scream of a trapped hare,—that sound where terror and agony mingle in a cry half human,—and so still was the hour that Blanchard heard the beast's struggles though it was fifty yards distant. A hare in a trap at any season meant a poacher—a hated enemy of society in Blanchard's mind; and his instant thought was to bring the rascal to justice if he could. Now the recent footfall was explained and Will doubted not that the cruel cry which had scattered his reveries would quickly attract some hidden ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... sir? Why, my chap, you looks as if ye didn't much mind what come t'yer nose, I reckon. You looks an old poacher, you do. Tall ye what 'tis'!" He changed his banter to business, "That bird's mine! Now you jest hand him over, and sheer off, you dam young scoundrels! I know ye!" And he became exceedingly opprobrious, and uttered contempt of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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. ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... 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 ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of my supporters," laughed Robert; "a bit of a poacher and a bit of a pub-loafer, but ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... nation, is now asserting his claim to a place in the temples of poetry. The Arthurian knight, the Renaissance courtier, the scholar and the wit must admit the twentieth-century artisan to their circle. Piers the ploughman must once more become the hero of song, and Saul Kane, the poacher, must find a place, alongside of Tiresias and Merlin, among the seers and mystics. Let democracy look to William Morris, poet, artist and social democrat, for inspiration and guidance, and take to heart the message of prophecy which he has left us: "If art, which ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... good-natured companion. He had brought up his family, and had now just enough land to keep him without breaking his back over it. He was quite satisfied with things as they were. I did not ask him if he was a poacher, but took it for granted that he was whenever he saw a good chance. Almost every peasant in the Haut-Quercy who has something of the spirit of Nimrod in him is more or less a poacher. Those who like hare ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... sir," replied the little man, and Charles's heart went straight down into his boots and stayed there. "I'm come down from Birmingham after him. He's no poacher. The police have wanted him very special for some time for the Francisco ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... the chimney gleamed a poacher's old gun, not worth five francs,—the wood scorched, the barrel to all appearances never cleaned. An observer might reflect that the protection of a hovel with only a latch, and an outer gate that was only a paling and never closed, needed no better weapon; but still the wonder ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... him 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
... that attempted the cataract at its edges seemed to succeed in forcing their upward way; we saw, too, on a shelf of the precipitous but wooded bank, the rude hut, formed of undressed logs, where a solitary watcher used to take his stand, to protect them from the spear and fowlingpiece of the poacher, and which in stormy nights, when the cry of the kelpie mingled with the roar of the flood, must have been a sublime lodge in the wilderness, in which a poet might have delighted to dwell. I was excited by the scene; and, when heedlessly leaping from a tall lichened stone into the long heath below, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... 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 ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... 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 ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... place with his finger. 'The Jew said it was from a rusty nail, or that it might be an ink-spot—but he is only a Jew. That is not rust, nor ink, Frau Berbel. That is the old wolf's last blood—on the right side, just under the ear. He would have shot me for a poacher, if he could, Frau Berbel. Well, I have got his coat, with ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... boy,—oncommon hard. I once know'd a poor feller as was hanged for murderin' his old grandmother. It was afterwards found out that he never done the deed; but he was the most incorrigible thief and poacher in the whole place; so it wasn't such a mistake, ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... character, only it has been floored with wood, and is no longer divided by rails into compartments for the jury and the accused. Stains of human blood once marked the ceiling over the north-east corner of the apartment, said to have dropped down from the room above, where an unfortunate poacher, who had been much injured by a gun, was confined. It is asserted that for many years no water could remove nor whitewash hide ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... one of those American gypsies, half poacher, half farmer. He kept a wife and family in a shack at the foot of the lake, and Isabelle, with a woman's need for the natural order of life, sought out and made friends with the wild little brood. The woman had been a mill-hand, discovered by the woodsman ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... home affairs. It would have been a pretty gathering, Constantine Porphyrogenitus the bookworm probably as president, AEthelstan of England, Charles the Simple of France or as much as his neighbours allowed him, that doughty poacher Henry the Fowler, German King, and Pope Leo not on speaking terms with him, St. Wenceslaus of Bohemia trying to make peace with Henry, and a make-weight of German counts and churchmen, possibly representatives of Vikings, Hungarians ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... said Alice cheerfully. "I'm not what you might call a 'free agent.' There is a young man, to wit, a certain Robb, who might object. Besides, I have not turned poacher yet." ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... thousand a year? Think of that, you hideous idiot! Do you know that, with rabbits only from the warrens of Earl Lindsay, they could feed all the riffraff of the Cinque Ports? And the good order kept! Every poacher is hung. For two long furry ears sticking out of a game bag I saw the father of six children hanging on the gibbet. Such is the peerage. The rabbit of a great lord is of more importance than ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... found the clothes of the soldier which he had hidden there, he put them on. Then he went prowling about the fields, creeping along, keeping to the slopes so as to avoid observation, listening to the least sounds, restless as a poacher. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... It was a poacher's trap, fortunately of a species with which he was acquainted. Her hand was fairly gripped between the iron jaws. He wondered with a set face if those cruel teeth had met in her ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... display her skill in 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, or ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... a poacher. 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
... shuttle of traffic back and forth of great migrations of 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 ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... is nothing more easy," said Mousqueton, with a modest air. "One only needs to be sharp, that's all. I was brought up in the country, and my father in his leisure time was something of a poacher." ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... his death, finally, illustrated the genuine humanity of his nature. In September, 1826, although an invalid at the time, he made a journey to Mannheim for the sake of procuring a mitigation of the sentence of a condemned poacher, whose case appealed strongly to his sympathy. His exertions on behalf of the poor man so aggravated his disease that he was soon beyond medical aid. Only his corpse, crowned with laurel, returned to Carlsruhe. Nine years afterwards a monument was erected to his memory in the park attached ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... saw their figures flying before them, and when they approached them, one of the fugitives turned round and fired, wounding one of the keepers' legs with a quantity of small shot. The keeper immediately fired in return, and brought down a poacher; old Ralph's voice was heard shouting to them to desist, and upon coming up they found him standing by the side of Martin Harvey, who had fallen severely wounded. Three guns lay by them, one of which had been discharged, but no one could swear ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... had even been killed within 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 fence their tiny gardens, ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... history as scarred as her hull and as slippery as her decks. Was she not once the Herman, and before that something else, and yet earlier something else, built for the Russians to capture the artful poachers of the Smoky Sea? And later a poacher herself, and still later stealing men, a black-birder, seizing the unoffending natives of these South Seas and selling them into slavery of mine or plantation, of guano-heap and sickening alien clime. Her decks have run blood, and heard the ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... run along the edge of the croft beyond when he was suddenly confronted by an aged man, who dropped his turnip hoe and ran eagerly to the side of the young nobleman. Old Guthrie could give advice from the experience of a couple of generations as poacher, water-gillie, occasional water-bailiff, and from as extensive and peculiar acquaintance with the river as Sam Weller possessed of London public-houses. And this is what he exclaimed: "Ma Lord, ma Lord, gin ye dinna check him, that fush will tak' ye doun tae Speymouth—deil, ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... my notice-boards. Your 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 believe a word of it. Ye've a furtive look ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... and he, with all his family and goods, took up his quarters in Glen Affrick, close to the forest. Soon after, he went, accompanied by a friend, to the nearest hill, and began his favourite pursuit of deerstalking. Mackenzie's forester perceiving the stranger, and knowing him as an old poacher, cautiously walked up, came upon him unawares, and demanded that he should at once surrender himself and his arms. Duncan, finding that Gairloch's forester was only accompanied by one gillie, "thought it an irrecoverable ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... poaching? Is Jack a poacher? Oh, how splendid! Jack's a poacher! Jack's a poacher! ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... not 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, ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... 'ave much liking for it. Peter Gubbins told '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 ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... his knife from his pocket, while looking about him with the poacher's unquiet glance, when he uttered a ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... House," near the church, lives the chief official of the forest, and here are held the courts. Formerly, this official was always a prince royal and known as the lord warden, but now his powers are vested in the "First Commissioner of Woods and Forests:" here the poacher was in former days severely punished. The New Forest was originally not only a place for the king's pleasure in the chase, but it also furnished timber for the royal navy, though this fell into disuse in the Civil War. Subsequently parts were ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... first was the son of our old shepherd, who had lately married, but was not yet encumbered with children,—a good shepherd, and an intelligent, steady fellow. The second was a very different character. He had been the dread of the whole squirearchy. A more bold and dexterous poacher did not exist. Now my acquaintance with this latter person, named Will Peterson, and more popularly "Will o' the Wisp," had commenced thus: Bolt had managed to rear, in a small copse about a mile from the house,—and which was the only ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said to myself: 'Let us wait until twelve o'clock. Then this poacher will go to lunch and I shall get my place again. As for me, Monsieur le Prsident, I lunch on that spot every Sunday. We bring our provisions in Delila. But there! At noon the wretch produced a chicken in a newspaper, and while he was eating, he actually ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... yard, slipped into the woods, found the dead man's clothes and put them on. Then he began to crawl through the fields, following along the hedges in order to keep out of sight, listening to the slightest noises, as wary as a poacher. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... was 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 apprenticed ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... you, Mr. Grey!" said Darby, with a curious catch in his voice of glad relief to find that the face bending over them with such kindly, quizzical scrutiny was not that of either gipsy, tramp, or poacher; for in spite of his lofty scorn of unknown dangers, he had grown terribly frightened for the possibilities which might lurk in ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... meadow bordering one of the many little streams, when I came upon a fellow roughly dressed, the pockets of his shootingjacket bulging and a fishingline in his hand. For a moment I thought him one of the gamekeepers and nodded, but his quick look and furtive gestures instantly revealed him as a poacher. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... it was a poacher," said Vijal, sadly; "yet I am glad it was you, for I can help you. I will help ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... 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 to the bone making ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... 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 uprightness. An author who was determined ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... into straw-filled sabots, sat sunning on the quay under the purple fig-trees; one ragged fellow in soiled velvet bolero and embossed leggings lay in the sun, chin on fists, wooden shoes crossed behind him, watching the water with the eyes of a poacher. ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... who had had a very narrow escape of being caught by gendarmes when upon a poaching expedition. 'Tout le monde est braconnier ici,' added my informant with a sincerity that was very pleasing. Of course, he was a poacher himself when reposing from his theological and philosophical studies. I thought none the worse of him for that. After all, poaching in France generally means nothing more immoral than neglecting to take out a gun license, and to ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... had a wonderful eye and hand; it was a good thing for society he had elected to be gamekeeper instead of poacher, detector of forgery instead of forger. No photograph was ever truer than this outline. Helen started, and bowed her head over the sketch to conceal the strong and various emotions that swelled at sight of the portrait of her martyr. In ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... him," exploded the general. "I'll shoot a poacher or his dog; but, dammit! I won't set traps for them," and he puffed ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... 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 ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... professional swindler. The fraudulent clerk and the flash "cracksman" interchanged experiences. The smuggler's stories of lucky ventures and successful runs were capped by the footpad's reminiscences of foggy nights and stolen watches. The poacher, grimly thinking of his sick wife and orphaned children, would start as the night-house ruffian clapped him on the shoulder and bade him, with a curse, to take good heart and "be a man." The fast shopboy whose love of fine company and high living had brought him to this ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... 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 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 men. My ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Sir 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 ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... search, and the discovery of the body. The next paragraph turns suspense into exulting wrath: the perpetrator has been found with his bloody shirt on—a scowling murderous villain as ever was seen—an eminent poacher, and fit for anything. But the next paragraph turns the tables. The ruffian had his own secrets of what he had been about that night, and at last makes a clean breast. It would have been a bad business for him at any other time, but now he is a ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... "I am no poacher, old fellow," he answered in the same quiet accents; "I think you know that. If that girl's mind is as lovely as her face, I ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... unwilling even in suffering and need of help to go up to the hall for succor; and she could not but fancy that for some frolic, perhaps some jest, or some wild whim, he had been trespassing upon the manor in pursuit of game. That he was an ordinary poacher she could not suppose; his dress, his ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... 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, too, he made ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... 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 them by the thousand, asking neither for the succulent lemon nor the grosser addition of Chili ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... be it. You have dismissed the Armitages on account of their upholding the king, and you cannot, therefore, be surprised that they uphold him more than ever. Nor can you be surprised if a dismissed verderer becomes a poacher." ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... We won't have so much of it now. Great Britain, Japan, Russia, and the United States are united in the desire to prevent pelagic sealing. Good thing, too. A treaty has been signed, forbidding it for fifteen years. So you see, a seal poacher on the rookeries finds everybody ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... 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
... 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 ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... sometimes raised his eyes and murmured: 'Ugly weather!' Then he told me about the people among whom we were to spend the night. The father had killed a poacher, two years before, and since then had been gloomy and behaved as though haunted by a memory. His two sons were married and lived ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... the story 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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... preferred to act "as a seasonable assistant in an irreligious age, and as a most faithful servant to the other Protestant Churches." Thus were the society members blackballed; and thus did Zinzendorf prove in England that, with all his faults, he was never a schismatic or a poacher on ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... hanged, and four men are now on their way to penal colonies. Six families are thus deprived of husband and father, that this wretched system of game-preserving may be continued in a country densely peopled as this is. The Marquis of Normanby's gamekeeper has been murdered also, and the poacher who shot him only escaped death by the intervention of the Home Secretary. At Godalming, in Surrey, a gamekeeper has been murdered; and at Buckhill, in Buckinghamshire, a person has recently been killed in a poaching affray. This insane system is the cause of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the old songs used to be regularly sung. "The Poacher" was always a great favourite and the chorus, "For its my delight on a starry night" used to be given with great force and feeling. I wish I could remember the old ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack
... his shooting-cap and laughed frankly. "You find me carrying a gun on your grounds," he said; "I'm sure you take me for a poacher." ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... forgotten nature's voice? or are those moments snatched from courtiership when they touch noses with the tinker's mongrel, the brief reward and pleasure of their artificial lives? Doubtless, when man shares with his dog the toils of a profession and the pleasures of an art, as with the shepherd or the poacher, the affection warms and strengthens till it fills the soul. But doubtless, also, the masters are, in many cases, the object of a merely interested cultus, sitting aloft like Louis Quatorze giving and receiving flattery and favour; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... (felix auda-cia, Mr. 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.
... inclined to carry them into practice in every instance, except that of the landed proprietary, which he clearly proved "stood upon different grounds" to that of any other "interest." There was nothing he hated so much as a poacher, except a lease; though perhaps in the catalogue of his aversions, we ought to give the preference to his anti-ecclesiastical prejudice: this amounted even to acrimony. Though there was no man breathing who was possessed with such a strong repugnance to subscriptions ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... for scaling the wall, and a partial screen for my operations if any eye should chance to be looking that way. And now it was done. I was in the park of the Chateau de la Carque, as nefarious a poacher as ever trespassed on the grounds ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Abingdon,—who knows not why? To gaze in shops, and saunter hours away In raising bills, they never think to pay: Then deep carouse, and raise their glee the more, While angry duns assault th' unheeding door, And feed the best old man that ever trod, The merry poacher who defies his God." ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... green-lane, and village street—and over those secret, bosky places, in the heart of the great common-lands, where the smooth, white stems and glossy foliage of the self-sown hollies spring up between the roots of the beech trees, where plovers cry, and stoat and weazel lurk and scamper, while the old poacher's lean, ill-favoured, rusty-coloured lurcher picks up a shrieking hare, and where wandering bands of gypsies—those lithe, onyx-eyed children of the magic East—still pitch their dirty, little, fungus-like tents around the camp-fire,—as the sunset died and the twilight thus softly widened and ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... about the twin dales at the time of this story, you might have met Parson Leggy, striding along with a couple of varmint terriers at his heels, and young Cyril Gilbraith, whom he was teaching to tie flies and fear God, beside him; or Jim Mason, postman by profession, poacher by predilection, honest man and sportsman by nature, hurrying along with the mail-bags on his shoulder, a rabbit in his pocket, and the faithful Betsy a yard behind. Besides these you might have hit upon a quiet shepherd and a wise-faced dog; Squire ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... the peculiarly Italian design of ornamentation, criss-cross lines on the ricasso. Given to Col. Shoemaker by a former Swiss soldier at Visp, 1926, who took it from poacher on Swiss-Italian frontier ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker
... A poacher's widow sat sighing On the side of the white chalk bank, Where under the gloomy fir-woods One spot in the ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... Mr. Shanks, "we must prove it; for that's your only chance, Tom. If we can prove that you always spoke well of him, so much the better; but we must show that he was accustomed to abuse you, and to call you a damned ruffian and a poacher. We'll do it—we'll do it; and then if you stick tight to your story, we'll get ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... should I be reflected upon, and the sex affronted, for my patience and perseverance in the most noble of all chases; and for not being a poacher in love, as thy question be ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... 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 ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... all, not at all," said Horace, trying with a very bad grace to laugh off his evident annoyance; "at all events, I don't consider Hurst a very formidable poacher; but what I want to know is, how he didn't come home with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... A poacher, aged nineteen, first outraged and then strangled in the woods a peasant woman, the mother of a family. On this occasion there could be no question of a miscarriage of justice or even of any suggestion ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... 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 ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... that of mild and stale; Two thirsty soakers watch'd a vessel's side, When he the tap, with dext'rous hand, applied; Nor from their seats departed, till they found That butt was out and heard the mournful sound." He praised a poacher, precious child of fun! Who shot the keeper with his own spring gun; Nor less the smuggler who th' exciseman tied, And left him hanging at the birch-wood side, There to expire;—but one who saw him hang Cut the good cord—a traitor of the gang. His own exploits with boastful ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... weasel kind. One of the largest of the latter is the pine marten, which is still found in remote and uninhabited parts of our country. It is a fierce and active animal, ever on the look-out for game and eggs. It is, in fact, a great poacher, and for this reason it has been practically exterminated by gamekeepers, in all the districts where game is carefully preserved. In other countries the marten is hunted for its skin, the fur of which is scarcely less valuable than that of the sable. It ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... "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 ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... 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 ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... servant, and directed him to repair to the lady's habitation, devise some contrivance for gaining admission, and deliver the same into her own hands. The man executed his commission with great ingenuity. He represented himself to the porter of the castle as a poacher; stated that he had just caught a fine swan close to Caerleon; and much wished to conciliate the future intercession of the lady by presenting it to her. The porter, after some hesitation, went to explore the anti-chamber; and, finding in it only two knights, intent on a game of chess, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... more agreeable to him than the rattle of cutlery. "I have scarcely [he writes] seen anything of the ——s since your departure; business and an amazing want of inclination have kept me from their threshold. Jim, that sly poacher, however, prowls about there, and vitrifies his heart by the furnace of their charms. I accompanied him there on Sunday evening last, and found the Lads and Miss Knox with them. S—— was in great spirits, ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... with the farmers' daughters: he was never known to give away a shilling or to do a good action, but was of a pleasant, sly, laughing mood, and would cut his joke and drink his glass with a tenant and sell him up the next day; or have his laugh with the poacher he was transporting with equal good humour. His politeness for the fair sex has already been hinted at by Miss Rebecca Sharp—in a word, the whole baronetage, peerage, commonage of England, did not contain a more cunning, mean, selfish, foolish, disreputable old man. That blood-red ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the vanishing daylight on his right hand would have shown his friend that the Earl's equanimity was undisturbed. He reached the solitary wayside tavern called Lornton Inn—the rendezvous of many a daring poacher for operations in the adjoining forest; and he might have observed, if he had taken the trouble, a strange post-chaise standing in the halting-space before the inn. He duly sped past it, and half-an-hour after through the little town ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... unhappy fate. A neighbour living out in the 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 ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... Edmee. "For my part, I preferred him in his poacher's garb. It suited his face and ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... say he ever seen me in his life?" Daughtry demanded triumphantly. "It's a trick I never seen played myself, but I've heard tell about it. The old-time poachers in England used to do it with their lurcher dogs. If they did get the dog of a strange poacher, no gamekeeper or constable could identify 'm by the ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... bargain, and accustomed to taking care of themselves in tight places," Giraffe went on to remark, proudly. "Besides, ain't we got a gun that shoots twice? That ought to account for a couple of the rascals; and then what would one poor fish poacher be against a half dozen lively fellows, tell ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... reply, "I been a-working hard to get some money to keep 'e with." In some of the Wood Norton woods there are large numbers of fir trees, planted, it was said, as roosting places for the pheasants, so that they might not be visible to the night poacher; but it was found that the birds preferred the leafless trees, where they offer an easy pot shot in the moonlight or in the ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... 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 ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... its Merkle threads, as the poacher puts his hair noose about the pheasant's neck, and while we theorize takes ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... Sixteenth Century. Where Black Rules White. Historical Mysteries. The Strenuous 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 ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... of a character. Poacher and trapper, with an eye like a lynx and a fore-arm like a bullock's leg, he was undoubtedly a tough proposition. What should have made him take a liking to Reginald is one of those things which passes understanding, ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... if he heard again of its continued pursuit, he would immediately make a tailor of him. Of course, the threat did not deter Murger from the chase; but instead of pursuing it openly, he pursued it by stealth. The sportsman became a poacher. Pierre and Emile Bisson quitted the attorney's office and opened a studio: they were painters now. Henry Murger managed to filch an hour every day from the time allotted to the errands of the office about ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... say, I would spend 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 ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... those 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
... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... through domestic bickering: Grace had the dangerous portion, beauty, 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 other ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... course, your room is on the other side. The sound came from the frontier.... Some poacher, I suppose...." ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... the 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 instantly without ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... without a tremor as she uttered the words, and he received them in a silence so absolute that she went on with scarcely a pause. "Not only to Isabel, but to everyone; to Scott, to that poor poacher, to me. You don't believe it, because it is your nature. But it is true all the same. And I think cruelty is a most dreadful thing. It's a vice that not all the virtues put ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... of the night by the stars that were passing overhead across the chasm. There were about half-a-dozen farm-servants, victims to the bothie system, that ate and slept in the same place; and often, long after midnight, a disreputable poacher used to come stealthily in, and fling himself down on a lair of straw that he had prepared for himself in a corner. Now, both the Highland hut and the Lowland hovel, with their accompaniments of protracted and uncongenial labour, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller |
