MARCH 79 



advantage of the liberty as to fill the minds of south 

 country sportsmen, accustomed to pottering pointers, 

 with dismay. But so staunch were these dogs that, when 

 two of them were setting game at widely separated places 

 on the hill, John would take the guns to the nearest, very 

 deliberately pick up any game that might be shot, and 

 then proceed to attend to the other point. Very seldom 

 was his confidence misplaced ; which was well for spec- 

 tators with tender hearts, for the towelling administered 

 to a dog that forgot its duty was not pleasant to 

 behold. 



By the time I had become fairly proficient with a 

 single-barrelled muzzle-loader, being then a lad of ten or 

 eleven, my father had let most of his grouse-ground, and 

 the Gordon setters had been supplanted by a kennel of 

 pointers. These were found more suitable for partridge 

 shooting ; not because the Gordons were less handy and 

 docile, but because the thin-coated dogs suffered less from 

 heat in low and enclosed ground and among deep turnips. 

 They were not heavy-jowled, pottering animals, these 

 pointers; but a swift, rather light, type with a dash of 

 foxhound blood. If the Gordons surprised a stranger by 

 their rapid and wide range on the heather, it fairly took 

 his breath away when John Pace loosed off two, three, 

 or four of these black-and-white or liver-and-white 

 pointers in a September stubble or forty-acre turnip-field. 

 The puzzle-peg had made them perfectly steady from 

 fur ; but it seemed impossible that these fleeting, flashing 

 creatures could pick up the scent of a crouching covey in 

 time to save mishap. John's faith in his beauties was 

 well-founded. It was the rarest thing possible that one 

 of them flushed a covey by accident. Much of the agri- 



