122 GUNS 



covert shooting, and the feeHng they give one is 

 of a sickening character. I can just recollect — at 

 the time I was but a very small spectator — one 

 accident in which tragedy and comedy were 

 perilously near to being mingled. We had one or 

 two white pheasants — freaks or varieties — among 

 the birds reared and turned out into the ^' shoots." ^ 



My old friend D n, a good-hearted, peppery 



farmer near by, who later was often my shooting 

 companion, was anxious to get one of these birds : 

 no doubt he thought it would look well in a glass 

 case in his parlour next to the stuffed green wood- 

 pecker ; there was a gentleman out with us on that 

 ist of October, who wore a tall white or grey hat. 

 Suddenly, just after a shot had been fired, this 

 gentleman ducked. Presently asked why, he replied 

 that his object was to avoid a possible second 

 barrel. It turned out that some shots had actually 



passed through the white hat. D n was well 



known as a somewhat explosive gunner ; nobody 

 doubted that he had taken the white hat for a white 

 pheasant, and fired accordingly. At lunch the 



affair was mentioned, and Colonel E put the 



wise question to the owner of the injured hat — 

 who chanced to be a doctor — '' Now, must those 

 few shot have proved fatal if they had passed 

 through your head ? " I have wondered, since 



poor old D n passed away, how in the world 



we could ever have borne him out shooting. He 

 was an extremely bad shot, and, when he could not 



^ " Shoots" are young underwood of only a few years' growth. 



