302 FACT AGAINST FICTION. 



my arrival, and pawing sometliing in a muddy 

 place bcncatli liigli lieatli and bog myrtle, which 

 looked like a small ball of plastered mud. On 

 getting down into the hole and picking it up, 

 it proved to be the jack snipe, which she alone 

 had found; and, refusing to mouth it or quit it, 

 she had remained scratching it over and over till 

 she had made it into the ball I saw. She had 

 not hurt the bird, and, when the mud was washed 

 off, the jack snipe Avas fit for the kitchen. 



In these rough wild scenes, or in some of them, 

 wood and swamp w^ere intermixed with clear places 

 here and there. If Chance, by any accident while 

 out of sight, came down wind* on any game and 

 flushed it, I always knew what he had done by 

 finding him with a peculiar look in his handsome 

 face come to heel. On such occasions as these, 

 I have turned round to him, and, praising him, 

 waved my hand in the direction he came from, and 

 said in a pccidiar tone of voice, ^' Wliere was he ? " 



On that encouragement he would go in the 

 direction the game had gone, whicli was seldom 

 far, for his red curly coat and his long, stealthy, 

 cautious gallop suggested a fox to bird ideas ; and 

 at times I have found pheasants and black game 



