MY FIRST SHOOT 35 



offered to fetch his coat from a cottage ; and, most 

 important of all, that he thrust a five-shilling piece 

 into my hand. Whereat I felt so opulent that, in 

 spite of so great an increase to an already heavy 

 load, my boots felt like pumps for the rest of the 

 day. 



Apart from my soreness at the loss of a good two 

 hundred partridges driven over the boundary, which 

 was very far from being my fault, everything went 

 well with me that day even to a total absence of 

 regrettable incidents on the part of my dog. And 

 when we counted the bag, there were forty and a half 

 brace of birds and a score of hares. I reached home 

 to find that the fame of the day had gone before. 

 Till I went to sleep that night I talked of nothing 

 but partridges, tips, and 'ifs.' It was a great stroke 

 of luck that my first season turned out meet to 

 be recorded in red ink. From that first shoot I 

 never looked back on my determination to make 

 game-keeping a success. 



32 



