CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



garret, and, with suddenly withdrawn blushes, titter 

 their delight in their rich paper curls and pure 

 night-clothes. Rab Roger, who has been cleaning out 

 the barn, comes forth to partake of the caulker; and 

 away go the footsteps of the old poacher and his pu- 

 pil through the autumnal rime, off to the uplands, 

 where — for it is one of the earliest of harvests — 

 there is scarcely a single acre of standing corn. The 

 turnip fields are bright green with hope and expec- 

 tation — and coveys are couching on lazy beds beneath 

 the potato-shaw. Every high hedge, ditch-guarded on 

 either side, shelters its own brood — imagination hears 

 the whir shaking the dewdrops from the broom on 

 the brae — and first one bird and then another, and 

 then the remaining number, in itself no contemptible 

 covey, seems to fancy's ear to spring single, or in 

 clouds, from the coppice brushwood with here and 

 there an intercepting standard tree. 



Poor Ponto is much to be pitied. Either having a 

 cold in his nose, or having ante-breakfasted by stealth 

 on a red herring, he can scent nothing short of a bad- 

 ger, and, every other field, he starts in horror, shame, 

 and amazement, to hear himself, without having at- 

 tended to his points, enclosed in a whirring covey. 

 He is still duly taken between those inexorable knees; 

 out comes the speck-and-span new dog-whip, heavy 

 enough for a horse; and the vowl of the patient is 



[ 15]" 



