Snipe Shooting 187 



chase was not successful ; but early one morning, 

 going to look for wild geese in the water-meadow 

 with his long-barrelled gun, he saw something in a 

 lonely rickyard. Creeping cautiously up, he rested 

 the heavy gun on an ash stole, and the big duck-shot 

 tore its way into the stag's shoulder. Those days 

 were gone, but still his interest in shooting was un- 

 abated. 



Nothing had been altered on the place since he 

 was a boy : the rent even was the same. But all that 

 is now changed swept away before modern improve- 

 ments ; and the rare old man is gone too, and I think 

 his only enemy also. 



There was nothing I used to look forward to, as 

 the summer waned, with so much delight as the snipe 

 shooting. Regularly as the swallow to the eaves in 

 spring, the snipe comes back with the early frosts of 

 autumn to the same well-known spots to the bend of 

 the brook or the boggy corner in the ploughed field 

 but in most uncertain numbers. Sometimes flocks of 

 ten or twenty, sometimes only twos and threes are 

 seen, but always haunting particular places. 



They have a special affection for peaty ground, 

 black and spongy, where every footstep seems to 

 squeeze water out of the soil with a slight hissing 

 sound, and the boot cuts through the soft turf. There, 



