26 A YEAR OF SPORT AND NATURAL HISTORY. 



or three. It is now three years since they paid their last visit, 

 and then we had one of the heaviest storms known in the north 

 for many years ; but the duck shooting was grand, and besides 

 the smaller birds we got a good many geese and swans. 



After blowing with unabated fury for thirty-six hours, the gale 

 has suddenly dropped, and at an evil hour on a bitter February 

 morning, I begin the pleasures of the day by smashing, with the 

 assistance of a boot-jack, the ice in my bath. Breakfast is not a 

 lengthy meal, for Bob has been putting the pony in the cart and is 

 now waiting at the door, as keen now for sport as he was in the 

 days of his youth, nigh forty years ago. Each of us is indulged 

 with a cup of steaming hot coffee with a strong admixture of 

 brandy, and, muffled from head to foot in wraps, we emerge from 

 the warmth of the cosy parlour into the darkness of the night. 

 Jenny, the pony, does not at all like being dragged from her warm 

 stable at such an unearthly hour, and exhibits her disapproval by 

 various antics. At last, however, she discovers that she has to go, 

 and we start off along the road with such sudden speed that 

 '* Garry," the retriever, is shot out behind with a dismal yell, and has 

 to foot it alongside until we get a pull at our steed at least a mile 

 further on. 



Ere long the grey dawn begins to cast a little light on the 

 desolate scene. A lot of snow has fallen, but, except under the 

 lee of certain hillocks where the drifts lie deep, there is but little on 

 the ground, and what there is is flattened out by the force of the 

 wind. Some three miles from home the road approaches the head 

 of an inlet of the bay, and here we can distinctly hear the calls of 

 the wildfowl out at sea, the whistling of the widgeon, the " quack, 

 quack, quack " of the mallard, the wild cry of the geese, and the 



