68 REMINISCENCES OF A SPORTSMAN. 



likely lie will shoot you Captain H instead of a 



pheasant, for he is very absent." I langhed heartily, 

 and said I would take good care to give his brother a 

 wide berth. As the poet persisted in his desire to ac- 

 company me, his brother lent him a single-barrelled 

 gun, and we gave him a few lessons how to prime and 

 load. Off we started in my dog-cart, the place for 

 appointment being four miles distant. My poetical 

 companion fired away at hares, pheasants, and rabbits, 

 but they all escaped uninjured ; at last he came to me 

 rather excited, to let me know that he had seen a 

 pheasant sitting on the branch of a tree, and to ask if 

 he might shoot it. The gamekeeper being near, I 

 referred his request to him, who acceded to it, saying as 

 he had had the bad luck not to kill anything, he might 

 have a shot at the pheasant. On hearing this, Mr. 

 Bowles cautiously approached within about twenty yards 

 of the tree, and taking aim for at least two or three 

 minutes, he fired, and down dropped the pheasant, 

 which he brought with much exultation to us. The 

 keeper, touching his hat said, " Sir, the usual fee paid 

 for shooting a hen pheasant sitting is a guinea ; but as 

 you are brother to his lordship's agent, I shall let you off 

 for half a guinea," which sum he willingly paid. 



The late Mr. Charles Bowles, the solicitor, was a very 

 eccentric character, well known in all that part of Dor- 

 setshire as Charley Bowles, the honest and generous 

 lawyer. I became acquainted with him, having been 

 quartered with ni}' troop for three or four months, the 

 preceding summer, at Shaftesbury, where he would 

 sometimes pay me a morning visit in his slippers and 

 dressing gown, without a hat, and to arrive at my lodg- 

 ings, he had to pass through one of the principal streets 



