MY FIRST SHOOT 35 
offered to fetch his coat from a cottage; and, most 
important of all, that he thrust a five-shilling piece 
into my hand. Whereat I felt so opulent that, in 
‘spite of so great an increase to an already heavy 
load, my boots felt like pumps for the rest of the 
day. 
Apart from my soreness at the loss of a good two 
hundred partridges driven over the boundary, which 
was very far from being my fault, everything went 
well with me that day—even to a total absence of 
regrettable incidents on the part of my dog. And 
when we counted the bag, there were forty and a half 
brace of birds and a score of hares. I reached home 
to find that the fame of the day had gone before. 
Till I went to sleep that night I talked of nothing 
but partridges, tips, and ‘ifs.’ It was a great stroke 
of luck that my first season turned out meet to 
be recorded in red ink. From that first shoot I 
never looked back on my determination to make 
game-keeping a success. 
