CO VER T-SHOO TING. 145 



gratified guests. The result is that the keeper is 

 pleased ; his birds, so long carefully tended, have been 

 " clean killed ; " nothing is so mortifying to him as to 

 see them missed or wounded. " Shoot, sir, shoot ! " 

 said a keeper once to me who was generally known, 

 from the character of his language, as "the Blas- 



A FEATHERED LUMP. 



phemer," when I was walking with the beaters in a 

 covert and sparing the pheasants that went forward. 

 I told him that I left them for the guns outside. 

 " But they can't hit 'em ! " he cried in agony. " Over, 

 forward ! There there again ! look at that ! " he 

 yelled, with a numerous escort of unnameable ex- 

 pletives as four barrels were again discharged outside 



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