76 THE CO:\IPLETE SPORTSMAN 



upon his estate, after the good old feudal 

 fashion, visiting the poorest cottagers at 

 Michaelmas or Lady Day to remind them with 

 a winning smile that the rent was due, and that 

 failure to pay would result in immediate evic- 

 tion. In the course of these agreeable pil- 

 grimages he would often point out to me the 

 many signs by which it is possible for the 

 expert to detect the presence of animal life. 

 To his acute eye and well-trained mind a 

 trampled rhododendron-bed would suggest the 

 recent passage of some heavy body; from the 

 sound of a sudden splash in the lake he 

 would rightly infer that someone had thrown 

 a stick at Gilbert the goldfish; and I well re- 

 member, how on one occasion, when we came 

 upon a bottle of beer wrapped up in a man's 

 coat, hidden away beneath a laurel bush, 

 my uncle had scarcely drained its contents 

 before he rightly diagnosed the proximity of 

 one of the least abstemious of the under- 

 gardeners. 



Sometimes, as we walked along, examining 

 each broken twig and turning over every dead 

 leaf with our umbrellas. Uncle Noel would pause 

 and exclaim " Hark !" And when I had obedi- 

 ently harked, and was unable to report any 

 unusual sound, he would throw himself at full 

 length upon the ground, lay his ear to the 



