"i5* 



28 WARWICK WOODLANDS. 



the thick whirring of their wings, and skirring over the under- 

 wood right toward Archer. " Mark, quail !" 1 shouted, and, re- 

 covering instantly my nerves, fired my one remaining barrel af- 

 ter the last bird ! It was a long shot, yet I struck him fairly, 

 and he rose instantly right upward, towering high ! high ! into 

 the clear blue sky, and soaring still, till his life left him in the 

 air, and he fell like a stone, plump downward ! 



" Mark him ! Tim !" 



" Ey ! ey ! sur. He's a de-ad un, that's a sure thing !" 



At my shot all the bevy rose a little, yet altered not their 

 course the least, wheeling across the thicket directly round the 

 front of Archer, whose whereabout I knew, though I could 

 neither see nor hear him. So high did they fly that I could 

 observe them clearly, every bird well defined against the sunny 

 heavens. I watched them eagerly. Suddenly one turned over; 

 a cloud of feathers streamed off down the wind ; and then, be- 

 fore the sound of the first shot had reached my ears, a second 

 pitched a few yards upward, and, after a heavy flutter, followed 

 its hapless comrade. 



Turned by the fall of the two leading birds, the bevy again 

 wheeled, still rising higher, and now flying very fast ; so that, as 

 I saw by the direction which they took, they would probably 

 give Draw a chance of getting in both barrels. And so indeed 

 it was ; for, as before, long ere I caught the booming echoes of 

 his heavy gun, I saw two birds keeled over, and, almost at the 

 same instant, the cheery shout of Tim announced to me that Le 

 had bagged my towered bird ! After a little pause, again we 

 started, and, hailing one another now and then, gradually forced 

 our way through brake and brier toward the outward verge of 

 the dense covert. Before we met again, however, I had the 

 luck to pick up a third woodcock, and as I heard another double 

 shot from Archer, and two single bangs from Draw, I judged 

 that my companions had not been less successful than myself. 

 At last, emerging from the thicket, we all converged, as to a 

 common point, toward Tim ; who, with his game-bag on the 

 ground, with its capacious mouth wide open to receive our 

 game, sat on a stump with the two setters at a charge beside 

 him. 



" What do we score ?" cried I, as we drew near ; " what do 

 we score ?" 



" I have four woodcocks, and a brace of quail," said Harry. 



" And I, two cock and a brace," cried Tom, " and missed an- 



