CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



attendant farmer, who can mark down to an inch, and 

 walks up to the dropped pout as if he could kick 

 her up with his foot; and thus the bag in a few hours 

 is half full of feathers; while, to close with' eclat the 

 sport of the day, the cunning elder takes him to a 

 bramble bush, in a wall nook, at the edge of a 

 wood, and returning the gun into his hands, shows 

 him poor pussy sitting with open eyes, fast asleep! 

 The pellets are in her brain, and turning herself 

 over, she crunkles out to her full length, like a piece 

 of untwisting Indian rubber, and is dead. The pos- 

 terior pouch of the jacket, yet unstained by blood, 

 yawns to receive her — and in she goes plump; paws, 

 ears, body, feet, fud, and all — while Luath, all the 

 way home to the Mains, keeps snooking at the red 

 drops oozing through; for well he knows, in summer's 

 heat and winter's cold, the smell of pussy, whether sit- 

 ting beneath a tuft of withered grass on the brae, or 

 burrowed beneath a snow wreath. A hare, we certainly 

 must say, in spite of haughtier sportsman's scorn, is, 

 when sitting, a most satisfactory shot. 



But let us trace no further thus, step by step, the 

 Pilgrim's Progress. Look at him now — a finished 

 sportsman — on the moors — the bright black bound- 

 less Dalwhinnie moors, stretching away, by long Loch 

 Erricht side, into the dim and distant day that hangs, 

 with all its clouds, over the bosom of far Loch Ran- 

 [18] 



