306 GUN, RIFLE, AND HOUND. 



At the end of the patch the brown dog stood steadily, 

 and the birds rose and went into the wood to the right, 



H , who alone could shoot, getting a brace. At 



his last shot a bird rose near me and I dropped it. 



" Quail, I think," I said as I reloaded. 



" No, partridges," was the answer. This was a 



fair example of H 's dogmatism. I thought if it was 



a partridge it must indeed be a " cheeper." I walked 

 forward and picked it up, when it turned out, as I ex- 

 pected, to be a common quail, and the first I had ever 

 shot in Europe. That H never thought of apolo- 

 gising for his flat contradiction goes without saying. 



Some little time elapsed before we again found 

 birds. The brown dog stood in a potato patch, and 

 on my going up to him out went a diminutive leveret. 

 In a minute he stood again, and this time there was a 

 wild grab and a squeak as I approached, and the 

 leveret was done for. 



We found our next covey in some lucerne. They 



got up badly, and H missed altogether, while I 



feathered mine. Very unsatisfactory, but we had a 

 fairly good mark, and in a few minutes the dog 

 commenced to draw on them at the end of a long strip 

 of potatoes. The first bird that rose I had, H 

 getting a brace out of the main covey. My borrowed 

 gun nearly lost me a late bird, but I just managed to 

 get the breech shut and drop it. 



When the keeper had got the birds we worked on 

 through the patch. Presently the dog made a steady 

 point, but directly afterwards left it, sidled a yard or 

 two through the potatoes, and stood again. 



