RAIL SHOOTING. 139 



ing, pluming, warring, idling or making love in 

 the reeds before him, seeing nothing of these, 

 and hearing only the chuck of the black-bird, and 

 musical cliinU of the rice-bunting, he naturally 

 asks for ocular proofs of the assertion, unwilling 

 to believe, 



" Without the sensible and true aA'Ouch 

 Of his own eyes." 



Ridiculing the idea of his inability to put them 

 up, if there, perhaps he demands to be landed 

 forthwith, and, gun in hand, eagerly pushes his 

 way among the reeds, while his more experi- 

 enced companion, chuckling to himself, quietly 

 lies on his oars to await his return. The first 

 soon looses his way in the dense, sultry covert, 

 and after some shouting and calling, at last 

 makes his appearance again in a very sorry 

 plight, covered with marsh-mud, out of breath, 

 and more disposed than ever to adhere to his 

 heresy ; declaring that while the reeds seemed 

 to be alive with other birds, he had been unable, 

 after the sharpest scrutiny, to discover even the 

 tail-feather of a single rail. Something he did 

 see once running swiftly between the reeds ; 

 but it vanished too quickly for him to say 

 whether it was a bird, or a water-rat. After en- 

 joying the joke, his friend ro\vs the skiff up one 



