JULY DAYS 



among leaves and branches. As quick, 

 the heelplate strikes the alert gunner's 

 shoulder, and, as if in response to the 

 shock, the short unechoed report jars 

 the silence of the woods. As if out of 

 the cloud of sulphurous smoke, a shower 

 of leaves flutter down, with a quicker 

 patter of dry twigs and shards of bark, 

 and among all these a brown clod drops 

 lifeless and inert to mother earth. 



A woodcock is a woodcock, though 

 but three-quarters grown ; and the shot 

 one that only a quick eye and ready 

 hand may accomplish ; but would not 

 the achievement have been more worthy, 

 the prize richer, the sport keener in the 

 gaudy leafage and bracing air of October, 

 rather than in this sweltering heat, be- 

 fogged with clouds of pestering insects, 

 when every step is a toil, every moment 

 a torture ? Yet men deem it sport and 

 glory if they do not delight in its per- 

 formance. The anxious note and be- 

 havior of mother song-birds, whose poor 

 little hearts are in as great a flutter as 

 their wings concerning their half-grown 

 broods, hatched coincidently with the 

 woodcock, is proof enough to those who 

 95 



