THE GUN 103 



quarter of an hour appear in the sky, till presently 

 the flock drops among the bushes, and with an 

 intense small chatter, like the hiss of the seething 

 starling swarm at roost time, settles for the night. 



Now and then on these evenings, returning across 

 the common, or along the road between common and 

 part of the wood, I have met with the woodcock, which 

 perhaps I have sought all day in vain on the noble 

 brows of Blagdon. Coming home one afternoon in 

 November, when the light had just begun to thicken, 

 I looked up and saw two woodcocks close together 

 fly across the road within twenty yards of me. My 

 gun was " at safety." The chance of getting wood- 

 cocks right and left was lost, and I left the gun at 

 safety. I had not walked ten yards farther when 

 the third woodcock flew over, well within range. 

 Had my gun been ready, I believe I could have 

 got three woodcock within a minute. The birds were 

 making towards a blind track through the high 

 underwood, where the keeper had noticed the mark of 

 woodcock feet and the holes where they plunge their 

 feeling bills into the soil. These lost chances in 

 rough shooting, prizes that seem dangled before us 

 by some Puck of the woodlands, add to the zest of 

 sport : they are like the missed trout in fly-fishing 

 that great trout of a season that might so easily have 

 been ours ! A wild goose came slowly out of the 

 Cornish estuary close by my boat. I was loading 

 at the moment, the cartridge stuck, the gun would 



