BEATERS AND STOPS 217 



what a keeper has to put up with. For if bad 

 beating, caused by bad beaters, is evident to the 

 guns from their view -points on the rides, how 

 much more so must it be to the keeper behind 

 the scenes, where he notices each trivial mistake 

 of omission and commission ? points which, apart 

 from radically bad beating, make for a continual 

 leakage of success that might have been. If a 

 gun is in doubt as to how much a keeper in 

 charge of a party of beaters has to depend on 

 each individual's gumption, let him take practical 

 command of an ordinary set of beaters during a 

 day's covert-shooting of known possibilities. Half 

 the time he will not know where the beaters are, 

 or, for that matter, where he is himself. I remember 

 a man who, as a rule, shot well ; but one always 

 could tell that he was a bit off the spot by the 

 way in which he would blare out at his keeper 

 that he and the beaters were playing the fool. 



I have known men who had beaten all their lives, 

 yet were absolutely hopeless so far as gumption was 

 concerned ; some of them men with fifty years' ex- 

 perience of beating, whom I would rather pay to 

 stay away than have for nothing. I counted it 

 good work on the part of one man (whom, of 

 course, I employed only when I was very short of 

 beaters) if he kept in the right beat. When he 

 started near the outside of a beat, and finished 

 anywhere near the middle, his companions were 



