THE GABDENER'S DBEAM. 3 



we fall ; and clays are succulent, and many black- 

 smiths fools, and it saddens a horseman's heart to 

 hear, ' Mr. Jones, sir, you've lost a shoe ; ' and the 

 dogs of shepherds are accursed things; and bird- 

 tenters, holloaing as though they saw the fox, are 

 men unfit to live : and yes, I see your derisive 

 smile, and I quite agree that hunting is, despite these 

 drawbacks, the cheeriest pastime and the bravest 

 exercise that stirs the sportsman's heart; but after 

 all, sweet vision of the speckled vest, it lasts but four 

 months of the year, and much of this time may be 

 lost and null, being ' sullied by a frost ; ' and tell me, 

 what shall mournful hunters do when lambs are 

 bleating for their mas, * and the green leaves come 

 again ' ? " 



Then the hunting-cap changed into a soft " billy- 

 cock," and the pink, and the cords, and the tops into 

 a Norfolk jacket, and knickerbockers, and ankle boots ; 

 and another apparition, stalwart and ruddy as the first, 

 stood, with a breech-loader on his broad shoulder, and 

 said, " Let me suggest the gun : think of the pure, 

 bracing, moorland air ; of the grouse, rising with a 

 whir and with a crow, and then tumbling with a thud 

 among the heather ; of the dinner and the rubber in 

 our cosy shooting lodge ; of the weed and the whiskey, 

 ' as ye tell how they fell.' Think, oh think of thi 

 grand excitement of deer-stalking! the first distant 

 sight of some glorious stag, the antlered monarch of 

 the waste ; of the long, the subtle, the laborious stalk, 

 when brain and body, mind and muscle seem to glow 

 like the wheels of swift machinery, and to gain from 

 the grand excitement of the hour a strange, victorious 



