CHAPTER XII 



Three Friends 



I 



CANNOT remember where I first met John Phillips, 

 but I became his devoted slave and admirer from the very- 

 first. John was everything that I was not — stunningly 

 handsome, with a wonderful disposition, infinitely at ease. 

 I have never known anyone who more completely satisfied 

 every test of perfect friendship. I remember admiring him 

 particularly for his independence of mind. For one thing, 

 he was willing to admit that he was more inclined to ruf- 

 fle his feathers with pride after shooting a New England 

 partridge sitting than on the wing. I had felt this way 

 for years and hunted in moccasins so as to creep about 

 the woods as noiselessly as possible. 



Once, walking down a wood road in New Hampshire, 

 I happened to be trailing John and his wife, Eleanor, by 

 perhaps fifty or sixty yards. I saw a partridge sitting In a 

 birch sapling about forty yards in from the road. The bird 

 had his neck stretched out straight up in the air and his 

 feathers pressed down until he looked just about the size 

 and shape of a rolling pin. I snapped my gun on him and 

 killed him the second my eyes spied him and, to my tre- 

 mendous relief, found that John heartily approved of what 

 I had done. I do not think he would have approved had I 

 ground-sluiced quail, but he knew, of course, that one gets 

 a hundred chances to kill a partridge in this country on 



