light playful alacrity; a third carries it on
petulantly; presently all fall to and assert their
discovery, as with one voice, until the welkin
resounds.

Every sort of dog-voice is now heard asserting
itself; every note in the dog-gammut is
audible, from the deep growling bass of the old
dog, to the shrill petulant falsetto of the most
ardent puppy. They are all at it tooth and nail
eating the rabbit up alive—a novice like myself
would be inclined to think—then quarrelling
over his bones.

Look how the four guns point at the covert,
the death-flame as yet unlighted in them, but
all ready to launch at the poor timid creatures
we are all so earnestly intent on destroying.
Hark! A quick snappish yelp, and next moment
out bolts the rabbit at my corner a
mere little lump of reddish-brown fur, a twinkle
of white tail, a mere glimpse and gone again,
before you can wink! I fire and Stockton
fires; but the rabbit is unscathed. I see
the little trough in the turf that my shot
ploughed up. I tried to be prepared. I thought
nothing could startle me, or be too quick for
me; but that conceit of mine has gone for
ever.

Farmer Redleaf roars with laughter at my
wanting "a slower breed of rabbits;" but stop!
they have him again. A posse of dogs throw
themselves on a certain furze-bush, all their
white tails vibrate through the covert as they
worm in, stirred by a common sympathy. Badger
shouts and urges on the dogs. Rasper, whip
in hand, dashes forward; having high boots on,
he springs into a world of thorns, shouting
"Tally-ho! Tantivy!" or some such old sportsman's
war-cry.

Now the dogs go fairly mad; out bolts the
rabbit again; he skims across the path
between the two furze clumps. After him, pell-
mell, go the dogs. I fire again, as the animal
trips in a deep rut; taking no aim whatever,
of course I miss. Again he is lost in the furze
—but this trick is his last. The unerring Silvertup
sees him for an instant. Bang! cries " Sudden
Death," and next minute Rasper emerges
from the covert with a dead rabbit on his
shoulder; but I feel no envy and no mortification,
for I am but a beginner, and I have at
least attended to Silvertup's golden rule of
rabbit-shooting, "Fire at everything you see"
It is a step of progress in the art of shooting
when the sportsman can feel cool and ready as
the game starts into view. The instant a pheasant
rises and does not appear to you in the
likeness of a sky-rocket—the instant a rabbit's
bolting out of covert startles you less than
if a tiger had shown himself—the instant a
covey of partridges can get up and not appear to
make a noise like ten watchmen's rattles sprung
at once; that instant, depend on it, you have
passed your " Little Go " in shooting, and have
only to improve your eye, gain experience by
frequent practice, accustom eye and finger to
work exactly together, and avoid either undue
haste or undue slowness.

The scene has changed. We are now some
three hundred yards further on towards the nets.
I myself am just on the edge of a green riding
of Summerleas Wood. A great wall of dry
leafless larches rises before me, mixed with the
horned and wayward firs whose deep green no
frost can harm and no east wind blight. I
delight in the grateful resinous smell of the fir-
cones, and in the pretty chequer of light I can
see moving between the trunks of the young
trees. The violets are as yet hushed and flowerless
in the dry white brake; the primroses dare
not show their little blossoms under the oak-
trees; but still, far overhead I can hear the
pairing wood-pigeons murmuring together their
love-secrets, and I remember at once that love
and spring walk ever hand in hand.

I might, perhaps, have stayed half an hour,
for all I know, day-dreaming in this manner, or
staring with rapt wonder at the magic blue
distance that, stretched fold on fold in misty
recessions of beauty, seemed to grow only more
divine the further it passed from the real earth,
when a sharp cry from Redleaf, who was guarding
the wood a hundred and fifty yards oft',
awakes me to the fact of an impending rabbit.

"Look out!" he roared. I did look out,
and that impromptu vigilance of mine was not
unrewarded. The distant yelp of dogs widened
into a fuller sound that rapidly fanned out in
my direction.

"Here they are!" Whish! The rabbit runs
across the riding, thirty yards before me. I fire
a little before him for he is "going the pace,"
but he dashes into the covert apparently unhurt.
What! have I missed him? Then I'll throw my
useless gun away. No! Redleaf comes to my
rescue, steps calmly into the brake, and emerges
with my dead victim. Hurrah!

But all this time the wood further in is echoing
with the death-knells of "Murder" and
"Sudden Death." Silvertup is performing
miraculous feats of shooting. He has killed
two rabbits with one shot—two rabbits that had
foolishly got into a line. He kills a rabbit with
a shot from the hip—I mean with the gun not
even placed at his shoulder. More wonderful
still, he is "so smart, sir," that he actually kills
two rabbits with right and left barrel—two
almost simultaneous shots. All these feats are
told me exultingly by old Badger the keeper,
as again "Forward!" rings through the woods
and we plunge among the trees.

Another scene. We are now deep in the fir-
wood, and on the brow, of a small dell lilled with
bramble-bushes, dead wood, and short scrub.
I am ankle deep in beech-leaves that are dry
and dusty above and a dark wet purple below.
The coppery antlers of the fir-trees rise over my
head waving to the blue sky. Below, in the
dell, the beagles are working with excellent
though fussy unanimity. It is an excellent
"stand-point" here for a beginner, because there
is little covert for the fugitive rabbit, who has to
race up hill in face of our fire, and to pass
unsheltered over the dead leaves and between the
tall slim pillars of the fir trunks. I can get a