WARWICK WOODLANDS. Ill 



a chance of driving two or three bevies into one brake, 

 and of getting sport proportionate; and in the third place, 

 as I have told you, you are much surer of finding marked 

 birds after an hour's lapse, than on the moment." 



''I will do you the justice to say," Forester replied, 

 "that you always make a tolerably good fight in support 

 of your opinions ; and so you have done now, but I want 

 to hear something more about this matter of holding 

 scent — facts! facts! and let me judge for myself." 



"Well, Frank, give me a bit more of that pie in the 

 meantime, and I will tell you the strongest ease in point 

 I ever witnessed. I was shooting near Stamford, in 

 Connecticut, three years ago, with C K , and an- 

 other friend ; we had three as good dogs out, as ever had 

 a trigger drawn over them. My little imported yellow 

 and white setter, Chase, after which this old rascal is 

 called — which Mike Sandford considered the best-nosed 

 dog he had ever broken — a capital young pointer dog of 

 K 's, which has since turned out, as I hear, superla- 

 tive, and P 's old and stanch setter Count. It was the 



middle of a fine autumn day, and the scenting was very 

 uncommonly good. One of our beaters flushed a bevy of 

 quail very wide of us, and they came over our heads down 

 a steep hillside, and all lighted in a small circular hollow, 

 without a bit of underbrush or even grass, full of tall 

 thrifty oak trees, of perhaps .twenty-five years' growth. 

 They were not much out of gun-shot, and we all three 

 distinctly saw them light; and I observed them flap and 

 fold their wings as they settled. We walked straight to 

 the spot, and beat it five or six times over, not one of our 

 dogs ever drawing, and not one bird rising. We could 

 not make it out; my friends thought they had treed, and 

 laughed at me when I expressed my belief that they were 

 still before us, under our very noses. The ground was 

 covered only by a deep bed of sere decaying oak leaves. 

 Well, we went on, and beat all round the neighborhood 

 within a quarter of a mile, and did not find a bird, when 

 lo ! at the end of perhaps half an hour, we heard them 

 calling — followed the cry back to that very hollow: the 

 instant we entered it, all the three dogs made game, draw- 

 ing upon three several birds, roaded them up, and pointed 

 steady, and we had half an hour's good sport, and we 



