A dead fox is profit to him for a fortnight.

These evil deeds of course are cloaked as far as possible.
Leaving now the wood for the lane that wanders through the meadows, a mower comes sidling up, and, looking mysteriously around with his hand behind under his coat, 'You med have un for sixpence,' he says, and produces a partridge into whose body the point of the scythe ran as she sat on her nest in the grass, and whose struggles were ended by a blow from the rubber or whetstone flung at her head.

He has got the eggs somewhere hidden under a swathe.
The men that are so expert at finding partridges' eggs to sell to the keepers know well beforehand whereabouts the birds are likely to lay.

If a stranger who had made no previous observations went into the fields to find these eggs, with full permission to do so, he would probably wander in vain.

The grass is long, and the nest has little to distinguish it from the ground; the old bird will sit so close that one may pass almost over her.