MY FIRST SHOOT 27 
months of hard labour. I had worked, as it were, 
day and night in the cause of partridges. With 
infinite care I had bushed and watched the favourite 
roosting parts, although there was no great likeli- 
hood of netting. Still, I grew more determined 
than ever as the days of reckoning drew near not 
to let slip what reward might be mine. The first 
day’s shooting was fixed for the second of Septem- 
ber, so I decided to put in the whole of the last 
night of August in the field with my partridges. 
I even made a vow to forgo the consolation of my 
pipe, for fear of giving away my presence. My 
object was not to scare poachers, but to catch them, 
so that I might appear early in the morning of the 
First with a heavy and perfectly legitimate bag. 
I set out about half-past seven, after a mixture 
of tea and supper, taking further supplies of food 
in my pocket. I took with me also an old-fashioned 
cloth-faced mackintosh of the Inverness pattern 
(which, on acquiring a ‘Burberry,’ I sold for half 
a crown). The earlier part of that night was not 
so bad, though there was no suggestion of balmi- 
ness in the air. Things grew worse. It began 
to rain and blow. For hours and hours I walked 
about in the darkness—in the cold, the wet, and 
the wind. It was not possible to see much, while 
as for hearing—well, I could hear enough to make 
me think anything was happening. A mouse 
rustling in a hedge; a straw swaying and grating 
