The Rabbit Battue. 231 



So it is, so it always will be, and so it ought to be. I, for my 

 part, am quite content to take my sport as I find it, and without tan- 

 talizing myself with the idea that many men have better sport than 

 myself, am consoled with the reflection that a great many have worse. 



I certainly never did join in one of those lordly battues, for a very 

 good reason I never had a chance. So I am quite unable to say 

 whether there is any fun or excitement in them or not -, buf all I 

 can say is this, that if they are only half as jolly as our " rabbit 



battues " used to be in the old forest of , in the days when 



I could bowl over nine out of ten rabbits, and scarcely see half of 

 them (I should be sorry to back myself to do it now), I only wish 

 some game-preserver would be kind enough to give me a chance of 

 joining in one. But this will most probably never be the case, and 

 even if he did, I very much fear I should not feel half so much at 

 home among the aristocratic breech-loaders as I used to do among 

 a lot of game-keepers and farmers, armed with old-fashioned muzzle- 

 loaders, and some of those of a very primitive description. I am 

 afraid a breech-loader would puzzle me ; and I am quite sure I 

 should never like to see myself in "knickerbockers." Besides, 

 every fish had best keep to its own swim. So I much fear I shall 

 die without having the satisfaction of deciding for myself whether 

 these aristocratic battues are so unsportsmanlike as many wish us to 

 believe, and live upon the recollection of the pleasure I have expe- 

 rienced in the only sort of battues which I have ever had the luck 

 to join in, arid one of which I will now attempt to describe to the 

 reader. 



" We shall want you to help us on Saturday, Master Tom, to kill 

 a few rabbits. You'd better be at my lodge to breakfast by eight 5 

 we shall have nobody there but the old lot." 



Such was the invitation I received from our head keeper (the 

 keeper who looks after the land in our own parish is always our 

 keeper, although we have not the slightest interest in the game 

 further than that we feed it), as, on his pony, he met me coming out 

 of our gate one afternoon towards the middle of February, and the 

 contract was ratified by 



