SEPTEMBER 345 



quarter to ten o'clock or thereabouts a tall bearded figure with a 

 genial and weather-beaten face may be seen striding across the 

 golf-green towards the Castle, accompanied by a pointer dog or 

 dogs. This is the keeper, Lees, of whom I will say — and it is my 

 sole complaint — that his walking powers are simply demoniacal. 

 Not that he seems to go fast, but his length of stride is tremen- 

 dous, and — he never stops. From ten o'clock in the morning till 

 seven at night, with the shortest possible interval for refreshment, 

 that stride will continue through snipe-bogs, over sand-bents, 

 across heather and peat-hags, with the fearful regularity of a 

 machine, till even the inexhaustible pointer dog begins to look 

 tired and to droop its tail. But Lees is not tired ; on the contrary, 

 having deposited a heavy load of game and cartridge bags at the 

 Castle, he just strolls back to his house a league or so away, has 

 his tea, and starts out for a spot several miles in another direction, 

 where he watches for flighting duck by moonlight. Nothing 

 makes any difference to him ; a few hares or an extra hundred 

 of cartridges he does not seem to feel. One morning, after a 

 tremendous trudge upon the previous day, I asked him if he 

 was not tired. ' Naa,' he answered wonderingly. ' Then I wish 

 to Heaven you were,' I said, much to his amusement ; but the 

 fact is that he never was, never is, and never will be tired ; 

 perhaps because he is a teetotaler. Total abstainers, please note. 

 On his arrival at the Castle he finds us waiting, for one of the 

 many merits of my companion is a remorseless and provident 

 punctuality which has become a proverb in the land, and off we 

 go. The arrangement is that we should begin with the snipe, 

 so we head for the hig /heel about two miles away, accompanied 

 by Lees and a satellite named Hector. A quarter of an hour's 

 walking brings us to a stretch of rough low meadows, which 

 were, I believe, reclaimed from the bog some years ago, but are 

 now once more becoming marshy. Just as we have climbed over 

 the stone wall of the first there comes a ch—reep, a flick of a 

 beautiful brown wing, a glimpse of a white stomach and green 

 legs, and a snipe — the first that I hav'e seen for a year- — is zig- 



