WARWICK WOODLANDS. 29 



ward, he fell heavily, completely liddlecl by the shot, into 

 the brake before me; while at the same moment, whir-r-r! 

 up sprung- a bevy of twenty quiiil, at lea^^t, startling? me 

 for the moment by the thick whirring of their wings, and 

 skirring over the underwood right toward Archer. "Mark, 

 quail !" I shouted, and, recovering instantly my nerves, 

 fired my one remaining barrel after the last bird! It was 

 a long shot, yet I struck him fairly, and he rose instantly 

 right upward, towering high ! high ! into the clear blue 

 sky, and soaring still, till his life left him in the air, and 

 he fell like a stone, plump downward ! 



"Mark him ! Tim !" 



"Ey! ey! sur. He's a de-ad un, that's a sure thing!" 



At my shot all the bevy rose a little, yet altered not 

 their course the least, wheeling across the thicket directly 

 round the front of Archer, whose whereabout I knew,' 

 though I could neither see iior hear him. So high did 

 they fly that I could observe them clearly, every bird well 

 defined against the sunny heavens. I watched them eag- 

 erly. Suddenly one turned over; a cloud of feathers 

 streamed off down the wind ; and then, before the sound 

 of the first shot had reached my ears, a second pitched a 

 few yards upward, and, after a heavy flutter, followed its 

 hapless comrade. 



Turned by the fall of the two leading birds, the bevy 

 again wheeled, still rising higher, and now flying very 

 fast; so that, as I saw by the direction which they took, 

 they would probably give Draw a chance of getting in 

 both barrels. And so indeed it was; for, as before, long 

 ere I caught the booming echoes of his heavy gun. I saw 

 two birds keeled over, and, almost at the same instant, 

 the cheery shout of Tim announced to me that he had 

 bagged my towered bird ! After a little pause, again we 

 started, and, hailing one another now and then, gradually 

 forced our way through brake and brier toward the out- 

 ward verge of the dense covert. Before we met again, 

 however, I had the luck to pick up a third woodcock, and 

 as T heard another double shot from Archer, and two 

 single bangs from Draw, I judged that my companions 

 had not been less successful than myself. At last, emerg- 

 ing from the thicket, we all converged, as to a common 

 point, toward Tim ; who, with his game-bag on the ground, 

 with its capacious mouth wide open to receive our game. 



