48 ECHOES OF SPORT 



my first rabbit at thirty yards with a pea-rifle 

 out of the drawing-room window. 



This was a favourite dodge of his, to pot 

 the rabbits from the windows. He kept his 

 silver flute and a pea-rifle in his bedroom, in 

 the early morning he would gently open 

 wide a window and play dulcet tones such 

 as "Rousseau's Dream" and "Robin Adair," 

 which he declared lured the rabbits out to 

 listen to this modern Orpheus ; the pea-rifle 

 then took the flute's place, and poor bunny 

 lay dead. 



Other animals, two-legged ones, ran a 

 chance of lying dead too ; a boy cousin, one 

 fine summer's day, fired at a rabbit from the 

 smoking-room door, which gave on to the 

 tennis lawn, when an instant after an itinerant 

 photographer popped round the corner close 

 to the rifle's muzzle. In fact, in those days 

 Cringletie should have been hung with red 

 flags like a modern rifle-range, for there was 

 no knowing where a gun or a rifle might not 

 go off. 



Many is the time I have had pellets 



