The First of September. 



Broadbrim ! Didn't you say he'd come down to me ? Where is he ?" 

 " Nay, friend, that did I not. I said he should see thee, and he has seen 

 thee ; and he did not like thee, and he has fled from thee." Tableau ! And 

 if that sober brown Quaker of a partridge does see thee, he will certainly 

 not like thee, and assuredly, as I have said, flee from thee. 



I remember once or twice beating through a couple of acres of standing 

 barley, in which I knew there was a good covey, but which, after the first 

 time, I never got a sight of. I was going through it for the fourth or fifth 

 time, when my keeper motioned me to stop, and pointed towards a hedge 

 along the crest of an adjacent hill ; and, lo you ! there was my covey, headed 

 by the old hen, scudding along in single file under the hedge as hard as 

 they could run. They had heard the usual rustling ; which, of course, 

 could not be avoided. They ran out at the upper end before us, round the 

 hedges, and before we were well out of the top end they had worked round 

 again, and in at the bottom behind us. I took in the position at a glance. 



" I'll go outside, George, while you wait here ; I'll go round to the 

 back end, and when I hold up my hand you begin to beat back to me." 



George did so, and advanced at the signal, while I went to meet him at 

 the same pace, and about the middle of the patch up they got nobly, and I 

 scored my brace, the old hen first, and scattered them over some clover, 

 where I picked up most of them. I might have gone after them forty times 

 in the usual way and should never have " fetched " them. 



I remember once missing a covey for nearly a whole season. They were 

 originally' twenty. I goib a brace the first day, and never saw them after, 

 until quite the end of the season, though I beat the field they had been in 

 over and over. I thought the poachers had got them. One day I came up 

 the next field along the party hedge. When I came to the end I was going 

 to get over the hedge in the corner of the field, when my bitch jumped on 

 to the crown of the hedge bank, and stood there as stiff as a crutch. 



" What can she be standing at ? What is there on the other side ? " 

 I asked. " There is nothing there but that old sawpit." All of a sudden it 

 flashed on me, and I said. to George, "I'll lay a wager that eighteen are 

 in the old sawpit, and that's how we missed 'em." It was so ; I jumped 

 up hastily on the hedge ; up got the eighteen out of a few brambles, &c., 



