SNIPE, AND SNIPE-SHOOTING. 246 



him down neatly. I turned and looked at Monk's face, 

 and I tell you, reader, the look I saw there was to me, 

 at once, one of reproach and of gratitude reproach 

 that my manner had shown a doubt of his trustworthi- 

 ness, gratitude that I had done my part equally as well 

 as he had done his. Perhaps it is needless to add that 

 I never doubted him again. Now that snipe knew that 

 he was in very unusual quarters, and, not seeing or 

 hearing the dog, thought, perhaps, that I should fail to 

 find him, and so kept still till I was almost in the act of 

 treading upon him. 



Possibly the reader may think I am giving birds 

 credit for too much sense, but if he had seen as much of 

 their ways as I have, he might change his mind. I will 

 relate another strange occurrence. One pleasant after- 

 noon in October, 1871, I concluded to see if I could find a 

 snipe. Taking the dog above named, and his brace-mate, 

 a dark liver-and-white setter bitch, I started over the 

 meadows I knew so well. After working over all but 

 one of them, and failing to find any sign of a snip^, I 

 started homeward across the yet unhunted meadow. 

 About midway in it, there was a wet, springy place, not 

 over ten feet square, and on nearing this spot both dogs 

 pointed. When I walked up to them, up rose a snipe, 

 which I killed. No more birds were found, and I 

 returned to the house. Knowing that there may be no 

 snipe to be found on one day, and plenty of them the 

 next, I looked upon this one bird as a sort of pioneer of 

 a flight yet to come. The next day I worked the mead- 

 ows all over again, and .with the same result as before; 

 no birds anywhere about, except where I found the first 

 one. and there only one, which I killed. Now comes the 

 strange part of it; for three more successive days, I found 

 and killed on each day one snipe in that same place, 

 and on those 500 acres of meadow could find no 



