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 bigjheel 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 cheep, a flick of a 

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

 legs, and a snipe the first that I have seen for a year is zig- 



