100 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



It is well to write from fresh experience in such a 

 thing, and just before writing this I was shooting once 

 more hi the woods and on the high, breezy common 

 of blackthorn and bracken for several days running 

 in the old familiar way ; the same keeper, the 

 same kind of terrier and spaniel ; the under- 

 wood coverts and the bunches of furze and black- 

 thorn to all appearance just as they were when 

 I first began to shoot among them in boyhood. 

 Finally, the same kind of bag. Here are the results 

 in game of three successive days' shooting ; first day 

 seventeen rabbits, one hare, one pheasant ; second 

 eleven rabbits, one woodcock, one pheasant ; third 

 nine rabbits. On each of these days I was shooting 

 by myself, with two beaters (one the keeper) and a 

 spaniel and two terriers. The third day I was shooting 

 for about two hours in the morning only : on the 

 other days two hours in the morning, then a break for 

 lunch and then about two hours again in the after- 

 noon, turning home in the dusk of an ice-bound 

 December. That walk home in the dusk of mid- 

 winter after the day's sport, what a feature it often 

 is of rough shooting ! Lights, the chink of tea-things 

 I think there is a kind of poetry of refreshment 

 about tea-things after a day's sport, though the fine 

 old copper urn has so long left the board the blue 

 flame and red glow and grey ash of wood logs ; these 

 at the end of the short day's sport are always part 

 of the pleasure. But the walk itself when a molten 



