26 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
many birds to so many acres was what I] could not 
feel sure of. 
Already I had had plenty of experience of 
labourers and others who, after seeing two or three 
decent coveys (possibly the same covey over again), 
‘not only think, but make publicly known, that a 
place is swarming with birds, or, as one old fellow 
put it, ‘there’s ’osales o’ birds.’ I swallowed it all 
with a good deal of salt, knowing that the test of 
the partridge pudding comes in September. I 
never knew a good keeper who was given to ex- 
aggerating his partridge prospects; in other words, 
a man given to that form of exaggeration is seldom 
a good keeper. 
Twenty brace of partridges to a party of four or 
five guns was quite a bumper bag in the days and 
locality of which I am writing. However, when 
the prospects for my first day came to be discussed 
at headquarters, I felt confident enough to suggest 
a possibility of twenty brace, if the day were fine 
and the guns passable. Often I have thought since 
how fortunate it is that few are the days of Septem- 
ber with fine weather, plenty of good cover, lazy 
partridges,.and skilled, active guns, armed, as is 
now the fashion, with a pair of ejectors. Partridges 
could not stand much of that. It readily will be 
imagined into what a state of suppressed excitement 
I got as the First drew near, with its prospect of 
active service and of the harvest of those long 
