70 Sporting Sketches in Pen and Pencil. 



with the assistance of Rat the dog, a goodish many rabbits are bustled 

 about, and seven or eight come to grief ; and another brace of pheasants fall 

 a neat right and left to Raymond, who shoots very prettily. 



" Muster P.," wliispers Johnson, " I see a dom'd old brindled cat a bit 

 back ; ef you sees'n, sir, give him a dose, please, and say nothin' to no one." 

 Eive minutes afterwards I did sight that cat, and she saw me, but just 

 a shade too late, for the No. 6 had chawed her up righteously. I pointed 

 over my shoulder pussywards to Johnson, who bored in under the wands, 

 shoved grimalkin into a convenient hole, covered her with sods, and battened 

 her down. " Many a young pheesant and patridge he've had, a old divel ; 

 and hadn't he some teeth and claws ! I'll gie ye a tip for that. Muster F. 

 Look 'ere, sir," drawing me close and whispering a great secret, "I see 

 a cock yes'rday up in the noth end o' Baskerville Copse. Only you an' 

 Muster Raymond knows on't. It'll want two guns to sarcumwent him, 

 if he's there ; so do you look out, and he'll do the same." 



" A cock, Johnson ! What, so early as this ! Never ; you must have 

 been mistaken." 



" Not me I " said Johnson ; " he were bred here. There were two on 'em ; 

 but I 'specs that 'ere blamed Fipps 'a got one on 'em." 



Then we shot another little wood, and scored a few more hits and misses 

 each, all in the usual way, and then we came upon a cart standing in a ride, 

 and therefrom was produced snowy napery, a cold round of beef, half a 

 Stilton, and some jars and bottles, and the next half-hour passed pleasantly 

 enough. 



What a jovial, jolly lunch it was ! how joke and jest flew round, 

 boimding and rebounding from one to the other like tennis balls from a 

 racket ! We ate our beef, and in sooth mirth furnished the mustard, as we 

 lolled about in every attitude of careless abandonment amidst the feathery 

 bracken, literally sub tegmine fagi. And how lovely the woods were, too, 

 with their gold and russet leaves rich with the first touch of the Frost 

 King's paint brush ! Beech and oak and graceful larch, opening out vistas 

 and peeps through the varied foliage in all directions — now down a long 

 green ride, across which one almost expected to see a herd of deer go 

 bounding; now through a little forest glade, down into a tangled dingle with 



