48 The Gamekeeper at Home. 



Early in the new year, if the weather be mild, as it 

 has been so often latterly, the birds begin to show 

 signs of a disposition to pair off, and in consequence 

 the guns are laid aside before the certificates expire. 

 So that the keeper thinks the actual shooting season 

 has grown shorter and the sport is more concen- 

 trated, and taken in rushes, as it were. This causes 

 additional work and anxiety. If the family are away 

 they still require a regular and sometimes a large 

 supply of game for the table, which he has to keep 

 up himself — assistants could hardly be trusted: the 

 opportunity is too tempting. 



Though a loyal and conscientious man, in his 

 secret heart he does not like the hounds : and though 

 of course he gets tipped for stopping the earths, yet it 

 is a labour not exactly to his taste. The essence of 

 game preserving is quiet, repose ; the characteristic of 

 the hunt is noise, horn, whoop, whip, the cry of the 

 hounds, and the crash of the bushes as the field takes 

 a jump. Students and bookworms like the quiet dust 

 which settles in their favourite haunts — the house- 

 maid's broom is fatal to retrospective thought : so the 

 gamekeeper views the squadrons charging through 

 his cherished copses, ' poaching ' up the greensward 

 of the winding ' drives/ breaking down the fences, 

 much as the artist views the sacrilegious broom ' put- 



