30 The Gamekeeper at Home. 



are fourteen or fifteen years of age. With these, and 

 with the sons of farmers who in like manner work in 

 the field, the period of development comes later than 

 with town-bred boys. After sixteen or eighteen, after 

 years of hesitation as it were, they suddenly shoot up, 

 and become great, hulking, broad fellows, possessed 

 of immense strength. So the keeper's boy is really 

 much more a man than he appears, both in years and 

 knowledge — meaning thereby that local intelligence, 

 technical ability, and unwritten education which is the 

 resultant of early practice and is quite distinct from 

 book learning. 



From his father he has imbibed the spirit of the 

 woods and all the minutiae of his art. First he learned 

 to shoot ; his highest ambition being satisfied in the 

 beginning when permitted to carry the double-barrel 

 home across the meadow. Then he was allowed oc- 

 casionally to fire off the charges left in after the day's 

 work, before the gun was hung against the beam. 

 Next, from behind the fallen trunk of an oak he took 

 aim at a sitting rabbit which had raised himself on 

 his hind-quarters to listen suspiciously — resting the 

 heavy barrels on the tree, and made nervous by the 

 whispered instructions from the keeper kneeling on 

 the grass out of sight behind, ( Aim at his shoulder, 

 lad, if he be sitting sidelong ; if a' be got his back to 



