"My Poacher."

A testament to Buck, a recently deceased shoemaker/poacher known to Bates as a child.

Buck exemplified the traits captured in Bates's novel The Poacher and mentioned as well in the autobiographical The Vanished World: remarkable athletic abilities, a rich and spontaneous humour, and a tenderness with children.

In The Countryman (London, April 1935, xi, 1, pp. 122-123, attached). Reprinted in The Countryman Cottage Life Book (1974, pp. 15-16).