34 WARWICK WOODLANDS. 



and rising on their fore-feet, they sat half erect, eagerly 

 waiting for the signal. 



"Hold up, good lads!" and on they drew, and in an 

 instant pointed on two several birds. "Fetch !" and each 

 brought his burthen to our feet; six birds were bagged 

 at that rise, and thus before eleven oclock we had picked 

 up a dozen cock, and within one of the same number of 

 fine quail, with only two shots missed. The poor re- 

 mainder of the bgvy had dropped, singly, and scattered, 

 in the red bushes, whither we instantly pursued them, 

 and where we got six more, making a total of seventeen 

 birds bagged out of a bevy, twenty strong at first. 



One towered bird of Harry's, certainly killed dead, we 

 could not with all our efforts bring to bag; one bird Tom 

 Draw missed clean, and the remaining one we could not 

 find again ; another dram of whiskey, and into Seer's 

 great swamp we started; a large piece of woodland, with 

 every kind of lying. At one end it was open, with soft 

 black loamy soil, covered with docks and colts-foot leaves 

 under the shade of large but leafless willows, and here we 

 picked up a good many scattered woodcock; afterward we 

 got into the heavy thicket with much tangled grass, 

 wherein we flushed a bevy, but they all took to tree, and 

 we made very little of them; and there Tom Draw began 

 to blow and labor ; the covert was too thick, the bottom 

 too deep and unsteady for him. 



Archer perceiving this, sent him at once to the outside; 

 and three times, as we went along, ourselves moving 

 nothing, we heard the round reports of his large calibre. 

 "A bird at every shot, I'd stake ray life," said Harry, "he 

 never misses cross shots in the open ;" at the same instant, 

 a tremendous rush of wings burst from the heaviest 

 thicket: "Mark! partridge! partridge!" and as I caught 

 a glimpse of a dozen large birds fliittering \ip, one close 

 upon the other, and darting away as straight and nearly 

 as fast as bullets, through the dense branches of a cedar 

 brake, I saw the flashes of both Harr^^'s barrels, almost 

 simultaneously discharged, and at the same time over 

 went the objects of his aim ; but ere I could get up my 

 gun the rest were out of sight. "You must shoot, Frank, 

 like lightning, to kill these beggars; they are the ruffed 

 grouse, though they call them partridges here : see ! are 

 they not fine fellows?" 



