THE COVERTS 273 



come meandering down from the moors above, in a 

 succession of deep rifts and broken clefts. In the rains 

 they are rushing streams ; now they are fast frost- 

 bound, except here and there, where the flow is too 

 swift. The hollies fretted over with the flying snow- 

 showers form so many sheltered bowers to tempt the 

 snipe and the woodcock. The intervening slopes, 

 clothed with the heather and withered bracken, are 

 studded with clumps of holly, fir, and dwarf oak, with 

 a sprinkling of hanging birches and rowan trees, bear- 

 ing their ruddy fruit. The lower boughs of the 

 spruces are weighed down with the snow and so many 

 natural blankets or tentes-abris, to make the roe com- 

 fortable in their resting-places. For there the roedeer 

 in the wintry cold appear to lose much of their natural 

 timidity, or rather it takes another form. In place of 

 stealing away ahead at the first sound of the sticks, 

 they crouch in their forms like hares, in the hope that 

 the enemy will pass them. And on these shootings 

 they are almost as numerous as the hares. So you must 

 load with moderate-sized shot and take your chance, 

 for you never know what may get up. You are ford- 

 ing a burn gingerly in fear of a slip, when a woodcock 

 is flushed from beneath one of the hollies. You tread 

 on the trailing bough of a spruce, and up springs a roe 

 from under your boots. The guns close in round 

 some likely-looking scrub of oak and mountain ash, 

 while keepers and beaters struggle in to thresh it out. 

 A rabbit or two come out as you expected, and then, 

 when it seems that all is over, there is the rush of a 



