56 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
ten. Here is an illustration. I went one afternoon 
in early September with one gun to an outlying 
part of my beat. It was just after lunch; the sun 
shone warmly, and the air was still. We tried three 
big fields, in which were stubble, sainfoin, and 
turnips (of which there were quite thirty acres). | 
knew well enough there were plenty of partridges. 
And nine-tenths of them must have been in those 
turnips when we two began to walk them. We. 
saw only one good covey and a few odd birds. My 
companion killed one bird. Certainly I might have 
killed another, but was attending to my dog when 
it rose, and did not try. 
A fortnight or so afterwards we were to have 
a day’s driving, and I was asked where I proposed 
to begin. I said I wanted to have three drives 
over those fields on which one bird had been 
bagged on an ideal September afternoon, and 
perhaps a score of others seen. ‘But,’ came the 
comment, ‘there are no birds there. ‘I think 
there are,’ I ventured to say; ‘try, and see.’ At 
the first drive—from those white turnips—an out- 
side gun, who got appreciably less shooting than 
the rest, bagged five and a half brace. 
If there is one thing all keepers hate, it is a boy 
being let loose with a gun and a dog on ground 
which at least has not been shot over once. This 
is how a boy enjoyed himself thoroughly at the 
expense of my partridges and—well, other things, 
