164 Sporting Sketches in Pen and Pencil. 



groggies from time to time, and spread out the bag — eighteen couple of 

 snipe, ten moorhens, a leash of teal, and nine ducks. 



" Not a bad day by any manner of means. Here's better luck still," 

 and so we sat and yarned of old friends, and past times, and days of sport 

 we remembered, and the big flask grew sensibly lighter. The day was 

 fading fast when we at length rose to go ; we had just dispersed the embers 

 and taken up our guns when some huge grey thing with a mournful screech 

 swept right over us, not twenty yards up. 



" What's that ? " I cried, considerably flurried, as the bang of Rag's gun 

 followed instantaneously. 



" The ghost of the old poacher — and a rare old poacher he is. Hold hard, 

 Dirke ; you'll have your eyes picked out if he isn't dead." But he was, for 

 the whole charge nearly had gone into him like a bullet, and Dirke came 

 struggling up the bank in the dim light with an enormous heron in his 

 grip. " That's the old rip we've been trying for all the summer, Mike. 

 Many a trout and grayling he's put out of sight. He's worth a many 

 couples of snipe ;" and so, gathering up our impedimenta and walking along 

 a narrow path, we hit the high road across, and walked home in the dusk 

 to a bath, a good dinner, a pipe and many toddies. 



NO TO THE OCCASION, 



