126 SHOOTING THE PARTRIDGE 



on, you will get a warning glimpse of approaching 

 wings. 



Twenty yards to your left an oak, gnarled and 

 weather-beaten, but disdaining to turn a leaf until the 

 later frosts, mingles his foliage with the russet and 

 green of the tangled fence. About the same distance 

 on your right is a gap, with a sort of rude stile or bar 

 across it, close to where the cross fence on the other 

 side there is none on yours divides the turnips 

 from the stubble. Between the oak and the cross 

 fence they will surely come, and especially must the 

 gap be watched, for it will draw them from both fields, 

 and is just at the right killing distance. Behind and 

 on your right a glimpse of greyish green hill, sur 

 mounted by a plantation, on which crawls swiftly a 

 little file of living objects. Slender as mosquitoes, 

 flashing back here and there a note of white or blue 

 to the October sun, seeming hardly connected, so 

 impalpable are they in detail, with the long strip of 

 grey green along which they move with easy but 

 deliberate precision. The Limekilns ! and a string 

 of the best blood in England returning from their 

 morning gallop, with, likely enough, next Wednesday's 

 Cesarewitch winner among them. Farther on, directly 

 behind you, surrounded at odd intervals by long, low, 

 isolated specks of white or red, nestling in plantations 



