SHOOTING TENANTS 199 



ing tenants. There is the lordly tenant of a High- 

 land deer forest and the man who hires — probably 

 from a farmer who has the game on his farm — 

 150 acres of mixed shooting. With the former of 

 these we have nothing to do here ; about the latter 

 I shall have a word to say. Before I begin to 

 speak of some types of shooting tenants, I wish it 

 distinctly to be understood that with the shooting 

 tenants as a class I have no quarrel, though there 

 are types of them which are certainly objectionable. 

 These, however, may be left for the present, and 

 we will turn to the shooting tenant as he ought to 

 be, and, I am glad to say, as he is frequently to be 

 found. A man whose whole sympathies and 

 instincts were with country life has been forced in 

 his youth by the severe struggle for existence to 

 spend his life in a crowded city engaged in 

 commerce, or in the arduous duties of a pro- 

 fession. His exertions have been crowned with 

 success ; he has made more or less of a pile, and 

 he now begins to yearn for that country life which 

 he feels is, after all, the life for which he was really 

 most fitted. He has the means for the remainder 

 of his life to live his own life, so to speak. During 

 the hard working years that are past he has not 

 had time to think of anything save the business in 

 hand ; what spare time he has had has been occupied 

 with recuperating for a fresh struggle with the 

 world. But now he feels that he can be at leisure, 

 and with the leisure comes longing for the old 

 country life of his boyhood. He has had no 

 means of keeping in touch with riding. He has 

 probably lost his nerve, and does not care to begin 

 de novo ; also it is not unlikely that he has grown 

 heavy. But though he cannot hunt, he thinks, and 



