Ii6 "TRESPASSERS" 



of hand- reared pheasants to blunder scared out of 

 their wits across a battery of half a dozen double- 

 barrels? this driving of grouse or driving of anything 

 what is it ? Sport ? Sportsmen who have spent 

 their powder on something more able to hit back 

 than these might well ask to be aped, at more 

 respectful distance. 



For the greater part of a day the coverts resounded 

 with what seemed for all the world like ill-fired 

 volleys, and one could not away with the thought 

 that it was for this stupid slaughter of a half-domes- 

 ticated fowl that those single shots ring out year in, 

 year out, dropping one after another of the noblest 

 of the winged kind. These are slaughtered that 

 those too may be preserved for final destruction; the 

 nobler by the hand of the menial, the meaner often 

 by the noble's hand. 



I mention neither name nor place ; there is nothing 

 in these notes that will furnish even a distant clue to 

 either. My concern is not with places and individuals, 

 but with a country and a principle. Abler pens than 

 mine should do this work ; abler spokesmen have to 

 some extent done it. But I have watched them, 

 sick of the hubbub, half retract their words, and turn 

 back from the blatant vanities of a time with which 

 they had nothing in common to the ampler, quieter 

 ways of Nature that is so much more. 



We, too, in the end, found peace in a deep hollow by 

 the border of a quiet lake. The Wren rattled a 

 salutation to us from the yellow reeds ; Tree-creepers 

 glided mouse-like on the bare boles and branches of 

 trees that, shut in by the steep slope behind, had 

 continued to grow and grow, thirsting for the southern 



