A Sportsman at Large 247 



' You don't seem to have forgotten the art, " I said 

 admiringly. 



' Well, well, it's not so bad considering my want of practice." 



Somehow I doubted that want of practice. Ere we 

 had gone far, my suspicions grew stronger than ever, for 

 Doctor Straton seemed to shoot as one to the manner 

 born. 



Just as we approached the small tarn which lay in the 

 centre of the marsh, a couple of teal gave me a remote chance, 

 and as luck would have it, I peppered one of them severely ; 

 but it was going at a terrific speed and vol-planed down on 

 a long swoop. Before I could stop him, Sweep was dashing 

 over the marsh, bent on retrieving the teal now some five 

 hundred yards distant. In his mad career he put up clouds 

 of snipe, which went screaming and gyrating all over the place. 



My companion stood aghast. Laying his gun on the ground, 

 he exclaimed frigidly : 



" Look here, Cox, I tell you what it is : that damned dog 

 of yours has spoilt our whole day's sport Confound him ! " 



It was my turn to be aghast. To hear such language from 

 the sacred lips caused me unutterable pain. 



Moreover, I felt deeply ashamed of my awful hound. 



But matters were not as bad as the irate divine imagined, 

 for the snipe, after wheeling wildly in the air, dropped down 

 into another marsh about a quarter of a mile distant, and 

 Master Sweep, having received well-deserved correction, was 

 now attached to a lead ; so that the wrath of my guest was 

 duly appeased, and we proceeded on our way to take heavy 

 toll of the birds. 



A few days previously, I contrived a rather curious shot. 

 A couple of snipe rising, one on my right and the other on my 

 left, at about thirty paces, had crossed one another just as 

 I pulled off, with the result that both lay within a foot of 

 one another as dead as a door-nail ! 



When Doctor Straton and I arrived on the scene of this 

 exploit, I was narrating to him this curious incident. Hardly 

 had I finished speaking, when again a couple rose, remote from 

 one another, on my right and left respectively. These also 

 crossed in their flight, and, as on the previous occasion, both 



