WOODCOCK SHOOTING. 81 



A week or two later in the season, you chance 

 to be crossing the fields, on your way to the 

 village post-office, perhaps, with some four- 

 footed companion of your sports composedly 

 coursing your heels. You are passing along the 

 skirt of a wood ; it is a balmy April day ; the 

 wind is fresh from the south, and you seem to 

 scent the odor of early violets afar off, as cloud 

 after cloud flits through the blue air : you hear 

 the short familiar notes of the song-sparrow, ear- 

 liest and sweetest warbler of his tribe, and in- 

 stead of feeling poetically inclined, ten chances 

 to one that you are thinking on another visit to 

 the snipe grounds. If so, mechanically turning 

 your head, you glance back at your familiar, 

 and lo! as if living in your very thoughts, your 

 familiar is " at a stand." 



There is a knostic yet half quizzical look in- 

 volved in the wrinkles in the old Trojan's por- 

 tentous face, which makes you think that he 

 has a tom : cat or a stray fowl skulking in the 

 bush ; and feeling a slight flutter of expectancy 

 yourself, bending low, you peer curiously about, 

 until suddenly, as by a flash, your gaze is ar- 

 rested at once, and little fairy, fairy bubbles 

 float up, as it were, from your heart to your eyes, 

 as amid the thin, dry herbage at the roots of a 



