126 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
get plenty of the spangles to be found on the under- 
sides of fallen oak-leaves. 
Though, the night before my shoot, I went to bed 
confident of a good day on the morrow, I did not 
have a good night. I seemed to be dreaming all 
the time of shooting my wood. How we beat and 
beat, and never flushed a pheasant—never so much 
as saw one running among the underwood, which 
seemed to be so thin that one could see through 
it from ride to ride! And then it seemed that I was 
not beating, but standing as one of the guns at the 
best beat, according to the plan of beating which I 
had arranged. Pheasants seemed to be getting up 
in a continuous stream, but my gun vanished each 
time I tried to shoot. Breakfast restored my con- 
fidence. We had a capital day. The bag was 
ninety-two pheasants ; of course, it ought to have 
been a hundred. Everyone was pleased, myself 
most of all. I got some tips. But what were they 
compared to success ? 
I am one of the many admirers of a tall pheasant. 
Frequently I have been obliged to prolong my 
admiration thereof while two little wreaths of smoke 
have wandered from the muzzle of my gun. Next 
to having a go at them myself, I enjoy putting good 
birds over other guns, but I have grown very sick of 
it when the shooting has been a mere farce. Many 
a time I have rushed birds over the guns to shorten 
the annoyance of seeing them missed. Here is a 
