136 THE TEINITY FOOT BEAGLES 



flavour, which cannot be repeated, but whicli so enraged him that he 

 turned to defend himself, and " I didn't mean to do it, you know, 

 sir ! but as I turned, my knife went right into 'ini, sir, just 'ere, sir 

 (marking a place just below the collar-bone), and come out be'ind, 

 sir!" This can have meant no less than a perforated lung or a 

 severed subclavian artery. But the butcher seems to have been a 

 man of determination : he seized Bob by the collar, dragged him to 

 the house, and, allowing five minutes to pack, drove him summarily 

 home. 



Thereupon his father set him to scare jays, jackdaws, magpies, 

 and the like from the pheasant coops, and he was hidden in a ditch 

 with a gun which he was solemnly warned to discharge only in the 

 air. " And I 'ad to stop there all tlie while as they was a-shootin' in 

 tlie woods. So I didn't see as I sliouldn't have a shoot too, sir ; so 

 I waits and watches a old jackdaw till he comed and settled on the 

 oud coop, and then I ups and takes aim " — Bob always accompanies a 

 tale with appropriate action, which, alas ! cannot be preserved — " but 

 as I shoots the gun drops, you know, sir (I hadn't never shot a gun 

 off afore, you see, sir), and the old jackdaw 'e just ups and flies off. 

 And then I gets up out o' the ditch and goes to see where the shot 

 'ad gone, and, oh, there were a mess ! , I finds a 'en as I 'adn't 

 noticed, and about six little pheasants." I cannot keep up the style 

 of the original, but the hen and all the pheasants were dead, the 

 coop riddled with shot holes, and Bob, his father being a stern man, 

 in a state of nervous perspiration. He carefully removed all carcases 

 and hid them in a ditch, stopped up all the shot holes in the coop 

 with dirt, and returned to his ambush — his lay being that, beyond 

 discharging a gun and scaring a jackdaw, he had seen notliing and 

 done nothing and knew nothino;. 



I wish I could reproduce Bob's acting — it was no less — of the scene 

 when his father reappeared, but I cannot. Ho had had a shot. His 

 father had lieard it, so that was admitted. Had he scared anything ? 

 Yes, there was a jackdaw which has certainly flown away. Then 

 the coop was found empty, and explanations were demanded, and 

 were not forthcoming. Bob had no knowledge of the existence of 

 hens : he had merely loosed off' his gun as aforesaid and a jackdaw 



