



CHAPTER XVIII. 



QUAIL SHOOTING. 



We stood in the marsh one day, Don and I, 

 He retrieving, ducks I killed almost in the sky. 

 Great friends were we, chums, just like two boys, 

 When a whistling quail coaxed us from our decoys. 



OFTENTIMES in the sear and yellow fall, when Oc- 

 tober frosts have blighted the green summer sward, I 

 have stood in the marsh, my faithful four-footed friend 

 beside me, and he and I have looked away up on the 

 hillside, where golden corn-stalks were bending to the 

 breeze, where little thickets stood apart from one an- 

 other in clustered bodies, and the osage hedges formed 

 a line of impenetrable fence. At such times, the clear 

 air bore to our ears the sweetest cry known to the hunt- 

 er, the call of the quail, whistling for its scattered 

 mates. We looked at each other, and when I said to 

 him, " Shall we go? " the bright, honest face, with its 

 eloquent eyes, beamed on me so wistfully, no words 



