The King Behind the King by Warwick Deeping

There were deeps in the forest where a hundred men could hide and never be stumbled on for weeks together. Thieves and outlaws who knew the ways could travel north, south, east, and west, and never be seen by woodward or forester. Moreover, these trailbastons and broken men left the deer alone, for they themselves were part of the wild and the forest was their harbour, and if no deer were slain they themselves were less likely to be hunted.

Now there were forest lodges and foresters at Pippinford, Hindleape, Broadstone, and Comedean, as well as at the White Lodge of the Master Forester; but none of these men of the greenwood and the heather had any knowledge of the queer gentry who were lodged among the hollies of Blackbottom Gill. The holly wood was itself hidden in a great wood of oaks and beeches, and the Polecat, who knew every ride and every path, and the spots, too, where there were no paths, had served as guide to these strangers. The Polecat had lived all his life in the forests, thieving, cheating, robbing when a safe chance offered. He could "burr" like a goat-sucker and scream like a jay, tell the age of a deer from its slot and its dung, and judge just how high the pheasants would be roosting on a certain night. The Polecat had hunted in all the forests in Hampshire, Sussex, and Surrey, and he would slip from one to the other if it happened that the nose of the Law had smelt spilt blood.