ROMEO AND JULIET, ETC. 213 



heedless of whip or strong language, but WILL go 

 recklessly at everything, from a hedgehog to a 

 highland stirk. Yet, in such a rugged and thorny 

 waste, they are invaluable, and, with their keen sight 

 and scent, and perfect indifference to orders or to the 

 most obdurate thickets of bramble, I hardly think 

 they left a living thing behind them in the cover. 

 Here a dilatory partridge would flurry from a bush, 

 leaving its tail in a terrier's mouth ; then in the next 

 clump of bushes a rushing and barking, and a bolting 

 of rabbits, now and again varied with the death squeak 

 of some victim of indecision ; or a long-legged hare 

 would go off with the varmint pack at her heels, only 

 to come back baffled and panting to regain their wind, 

 and again brush through the thorns for more blood. 



Having finished out these covers, Peter Doig took 

 us along the burn for a mile or so, and then over a 

 rising ground that looked on a small glen sprinkled 

 with birch -trees, with a thick undergrowth of bush, 

 fern, and rank heather; he said that " there was 

 whiles a roe or twa in the wood," and that they 

 would beat it up slowly : so, having taken us 

 round and placed us at different corners by the end 

 and edges of the wood, he went away back to have it 

 beat up. 



