MANFORD AND SERTON'S COSY NEST 35 



obvious neatness and dispatch, and in shifting over to 

 another hedgerow he shot a jay and gloried in its 

 splendour. The keeper, however, moderated any secret 

 intentions there might have been as to the plumage by 

 one sentence : " That's another for the vermin book. 

 I gets a bob for that." 



The keeper's cottage gave lunch and rest to the 

 party, and the talk was either of ferrets, hares, and 

 rabbits, or of the two rudely carpentered cases which 

 contained well-set-up specimens of teal, cuckoo, wry- 

 neck, abnormally marked swallow, pied rat, landrail, 

 and polecat, each being a chapter in the life history of 

 the keeper. 



The tale of rabbits being incomplete, M. returned to 

 his former occupation, but S. fished again, continually 

 finding sport of the miscellaneous kind, such as a chub 

 with cheese paste, perch with dew worm out of the 

 milk-prepared moss, roach rod with running tackle, 

 and leger tackle on a spinning rod. With this and a 

 great worm on strong hook he had the surprise of a 

 fight that gave him not a little concern. The fish at 

 first appeared to be going to ground, even boring bodily 

 into it. Then it gave way to panic, and shot about the 

 pool as if pursued by a water fiend. Winched in slowly, 

 it plunged into the bank, thought better of it, and ran 

 up stream. At this crisis M. arrived, commandeered 

 the net, and stood around offering advice. It was a 

 monster eel, he said. Give him more butt ; be care- 

 ful ; be more energetic ; certainly, all right. The last 

 remark was simply a receipt in form of a little speech 

 from S., who had briefly bidden him to mind his own 

 business. The unseen fish abruptly had given in. Was 

 it collapse ? Slowly, slowly it followed the revolution 

 of the reel, both men peering intent for first sight and 

 grounds for identification of species. The first sight, 



