CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



or, as it was called in the parish — "a leeshance." Nor, 

 for a year or two, was such a permit necessary; as we 

 confined ourselves almost exclusively to sparrows. Not 

 that we had any personal animosity to the spaiTOw 

 individually — on the contrary, we loved him, and had 

 a tame one — a fellow of infinite fancy — with comb 

 and wattles of crimson cloth like a gamecock. But 

 their numbers, without number numberless, seemed to 

 justify the humanest of boys in killing any quantity 

 of sprauchs. Why, they would sometimes settle on the 

 clipped half-thorn and half-beech hedge of the Manse 

 garden in myriads, midge-like; and then out any two 

 of us, whose day it happened to be, used to sally with 

 Muckle-mou'd Meg and the Lang Gun, charged two 

 hands and a finger; and, with a loud shout, startling 

 them from their roost like the sudden casting of a 

 swarm of bees, we let drive into the whir — a shower 

 of feathers was instantly seen swimming in the air, 

 and flower-bed and onion-bed covered with scores of 

 the mortally wounded old cocks with black heads, old 

 hens with brown, and the pride of the eaves laid low 

 before their first crop of peas ! Never was there such a 

 parish for sparrows. You had but to fling a stone into 

 any stack-yard, and up rose a sprauch-shower. The 

 thatch of every cottage was drilled by them like 

 honey-combs. House-spouts were of no use in rainy 

 weather — for they were all choked up by sprauch- 

 [55] 



