IN FOREST AND ON HILL 249 



that take ruthless toll of the lambs. With their habits, 

 in the games of hide-and-seek with the beaters, they 

 have generally much the best of it, and the strategy 

 in the autumnal battues may be lamentable, yet from 

 pleasant associations we own to a fondness for these. 

 For we remember the jovial bachelor party that used 

 to assemble for the annual week in October in the grey 

 old mansion among its wide-stretching woods woods 

 which might be driven through five hard working 

 days without ever coming to the end of them. We 

 recall those larches and silver firs of portentous girth 

 that reared their clear stems toward the skies in long- 

 drawn lines of russet-coloured columns as they flung 

 the broad shadows of their graceful boughs over the 

 velvety turf by the clear-flowing river in what is locally 

 known as " Paradise." These were the good old days 

 before Radical tenants cared to trouble themselves 

 about the game-laws ; when they held their farms at 

 the reasonable rents which made ample allowance for 

 inevitable damages ; when the surplus game, instead of 

 going to the local markets, was sent round to the home- 

 steads among the fields where it had fed ; and when 

 sundry of the laird's old friends among the farmers came 

 to make up the long line of guns that drew themselves 

 out across the breadth of the cover. But it was a right 

 merry gathering all the same, as might be seen and 

 heard at the meeting for the al fresco lunch, when 

 tongues relieved from restraint were recompensing 

 themselves for their previous silence. And then the 

 comparing notes over the events of the day, when, 



