PARTRIDGE-SHOOTING 89 



who always loved hunting, and did his best to support it on 

 every occasion. He had covers at Colworth, which were a sure 

 find, and the foxes beautifully preserved : a hospitable, kind- 

 hearted gentleman, who supported me well independently of 

 the Oakley Club throughout my stay in that country; and 

 I confess'that one of the regrets that attended my departure 

 was, that I should have him no longer for a neighbour. Besides 

 Mr. Magniac, there were several others ; and as usual the con- 

 versation after dinner turned on sport. Mr. St. Leger, rather 

 slightingly of my supposed bag on the first, asked me what I 

 expected to get ; adding I was deceived if I thought there was 

 much there. I replied that I should do very well, and thought 

 I should bag as much, perhaps, as he did, or anybody in the 

 room. This was received with exclamations of derision, when, 

 as I heard that Mr. St. Leger did little else in the sporting line 

 but shoot, though always with a cigar in his mouth, I added to 

 my previous rashness, by saying I was sure I should beat him. 

 I said this because I never saw a man do much at anything who 

 did two things at once, particularly when one of those two 

 things consisted in a pipe ; and I knew that in walking and 

 shooting, and a pointer (I had but one), few men, if any, could 

 beat me. Bets were talked of, but none made ; and I thought 

 Mr. Magniac, who knew something of my proficiencies in sport, 

 was highly amused by the wrath my apparent presumption had 

 occasioned in Mr. St. Leger. The day arrived; I shot at 

 Stevington, and so home by Carl ton, with my curious old 

 pointer Don, who certainly was the ugliest and oddest animal 

 that man ever had, and who always sulked in the far end of a 

 tub from the first of February till the first of September. The 

 coming off of the hammer of one barrel of my gun saved a good 

 many birds, as it was some time before a second gun could reach 

 me; however, before four oHock, and with lots of scattered 

 birds around me, to kill if I pleased, I left off to go to my 

 kennel, with thirty-one brace of birds, and a hare or two. I 

 believe Mr. St. Leger bagged somewhere about ten brace ; in 

 short, no one who was at that dinner party made anything like 



