44 The Wild-Fowlers 



and books, the apartment quite at the 

 top of the building was filled to its very 

 walls with the very oddest collection of 

 guns, bags of shot, powder cans, snipe 

 and duck decoys, deer and bear heads, 

 game panels and rugs, fishing-rods, shoot- 

 ing-coats and -caps, and the hundred-and- 

 one other devices and instruments of the 

 field sportsman. Seth sat in the midst 

 of the odd outfit as Little Nell's grand- 

 father sat in the Old Curiosity Shop, and 

 to judge by his face and general appear- 

 ance one would not be long in coming to 

 the conclusion that he was quite at home. 

 Clothed from shoulder to knee in chest- 

 nut-colored corduroy, with heavy pigskin 

 shoes and short leather leggings, a pair 

 of driving gloves just peeping out of his 

 jacket top pocket, and a rawhide dog- 

 leash and silver whistle hooked to the flap 

 of a lower pocket, he looked the very pic- 

 ture of a chivalrous fieldman. 



" Get ready, Don/' he cried to a lively 

 red setter as soon as he had closed his 



