WHEN I WAS YOUNG 21 



She accompanied me wherever I went for fifteen 

 years, and many a time in autumn we spent the 

 night together lying in sandhills, sleeping where we 

 could find a sheltered bank, or wakeful and watching 

 for the dawn when it was too cold to sleep. There 

 was never a sea too thunderous to enter or a bird 

 fallen at a distance that was beyond Jet's powers, 

 and being always with me, I brought her education 

 to a pitch of intelligence I do not see exhibited in 

 Field trial dogs of to-day, whose training is often 

 calculated to destroy initiative and turn them into 

 machines. 1 



My father and mother were always opposed to 

 these constant absences on my part, but being 

 good-natured and broad-minded people, and having 

 regard to the fact that I always returned at some 

 time or another, they had got accustomed to my 

 perpetual wanderings, and ceased to wonder. 



My usual plan was to go by train to some point 

 on the coast and send my bag forward some thirty 

 miles (since the line travels along nearly the whole 

 coast-line from Berwick to Helmsdale), and then 

 work towards it. Many a day I never reached my 

 dry clothes and extra cartridges, because I had seen 

 some rare visitor at which a shot could not be 

 obtained. Then it meant a night, and sometimes 

 two, out in the open, until the specimen was bagged 

 or lost. It was rough work for one so young, but 

 I loved the life as only a young naturalist can do, 

 and when I shot a Knot or a Turnstone in summer 

 plumage I did not envy any man in the world. 

 Another good hunting- and fishing-ground was Loch 



1 I can speak from experience, as I have judged at many 

 " Field " trials. 



