246 My Last Day in the Fen. 



my breakfast. However, " Old Curossity" was too old a collector 

 to show his disappointment, especially when he felt that a good- 

 natured motive had prompted the gift ; so, thanking them cordially 

 for their present, and ordering a gallon of ale to be instantly dis- 

 tributed among the lot, he dismissed them, after strongly impressing 

 upon their minds that he did not want any more such animals 

 unless they should happen to fall in with one perfectly white. His 

 mind, however, was not at rest throughout the day, and he fre- 

 quently expressed his fears that on our return we might find 

 another group awaiting our arrival, with some other such specimen ; 

 and, as he truly observed, " I should not mind if they came single, 

 but when they come in such droves a gallon of ale hardly furnishes 

 a mouthful each." 



After that night of sound repose, which no one enjoys better 

 than the sportsman, I was up betimes. The weather had cleared, 

 the wind blew gently from the west, and it was the day of all 

 others for snipe-shooting. To describe the day's sport would be 

 superfluous, one day's snipe-shooting so much resembles another. 

 The splashing through the reed-beds and marshy meadows 5 the 

 jumps of the fen ditches j the "scape" of the rising snipe j the 

 " Well killed, master," of the guide when a good shot was made 

 are familiar to every sportsman. Suffice it to say that I never had 

 a better day in the fen than my last. Nine and a half couples of 

 snipe, three mallard, five teal, was the bag j and the last shot that I 

 fired in the fen I can remember as if it was but yesterday, for we 

 had nearly reached home, and as I was climbing over a gate two 

 mallard rose from a fen-dyke close to me, and I made a good wind- 

 up by killing them right and left. There is nearly always some- 

 thing of melancholy associated in this life with the reflection that 

 "this is the last," and as the echoes of my gun died away in the 

 distance I thought of the many solitary and happy rambles I had 

 enjoyed in this spot; and it was with a feeling of depression, 

 heightened by the gloom of the evening, that I bade adieu to 

 my old friend and turned my horse's head homewards. That 



