the river banks and near drinking pools ; but one 

 evening Jock came forward of his own accord to help 

 me a sort of amused volunteer ; and after that I 

 always used him. 



He had been at my heels, apparently taking little 

 interest in the proceedings from the moment the first 

 bird fell and he saw what the game was ; probably 

 he was intelligently interested all the time but con- 

 sidered it nothing to get excited about. After a time 

 I saw him turn aside from the line we had been taking 

 and stroll off at a walking pace, sniffing softly the while. 

 When he had gone a dozen yards he stopped and 

 looked back at me ; then he looked in front again with 

 his head slightly on one side, much as he would have 

 done examining a beetle rolling his ball. 



There were no signs of anything, yet the grass was 

 short for those parts, scarce a foot high, and close, 

 soft and curly. A brace of partridges rose a few feet 

 from Jock, and he stood at ease calmly watching them, 

 without a sign or move to indicate more than amused 

 interest. The birds were absurdly tame and sailed 

 so quietly along that I hesitated at first to shoot ; then 

 the noise of the two shots put up the largest number 

 of partridges I have ever seen in one lot, and a line of 

 birds rose for perhaps sixty yards across our front. 

 There was no wild whirr and confusion : they rose 

 in leisurely fashion as if told to move on, sailing in- 

 finitely slowly down the slope to the thorns near the 

 donga. Running my eye along the line I counted 

 them in twos up to between thirty and forty ; and that 

 could not have been more than half. How many 



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