A REMINISCENCE 3 



landowners and their friends were invited, certain regulations 

 prevailed to which, unwritten though they were, every one bowed, 

 including several fines, which, however, were not always easy to 

 collect. There were penalties for missing and omitting to shoot 

 when game was sufficiently close to the gun to make killing a 

 reasonable certainty a difficult point to prove, and likely to 

 lead to a good deal of dispute. The fines for missing or not 

 firing at a hare were of course small, but they rose when it 

 came to a fox or a roe-deer. Only the bucks of the latter were 

 allowed to be shot ; to kill a doe was not only visited by the 

 highest penalty, but was also, and very naturally (the deer being 

 scarce), considered a great disgrace. However, the possibility 

 of mistaking a harmless doe for a horned buck never entered my 

 head when walking to the first covert along a road which, in my 

 youthful impatience, appeared endless, as the pace at which we 

 moved seemed to resemble that of a funeral procession. And 

 then half-way we stopped to load, that long and tedious pro- 

 ceeding which, thank goodness, breechloaders have long since 

 done away with. It always took a long time, commencing with 

 the snapping of caps, the end of the barrel being held against a 

 bit of grass, which showed by its recoil whether the nipples 

 were clear or otherwise. As everything must end, so at last the 

 loading also was completed ; but I, of course, had finished first, 

 and had not forgotten to add to the shot a pellet found a week 

 before in a roasted partridge, and therefore considered a certain 

 hitter ; this pellet, after very nearly breaking my tooth, had 

 since been carefully treasured in the waistcoat pocket, whence it 

 now was disinterred once more to be despatched on its deadly 

 errand. At last we arrived at a belt of young firs and larches, 

 beeches and various shrubs, and were posted by the keeper with 

 strict injunctions on no account to leave our places, and then 

 the drive commenced, producing nothing, however, but a few 

 hares, one of which I slew, and a woodcock, at which every one 

 fired, to the great danger of everybody else. Next we went to a 

 thick covert, part of an extensive wood, the remains of a forest 

 which once had covered the whole of the country, where roe-deer 

 were known to be. We were soon again in our places, mine 

 being in a very thick patch of young firs and low oak scrub, 

 growing under some higher birch and beech-trees, where I could 

 see my neighbour on either side. My mind was terribly occupied 



