144 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
his general appearance, my attention was particu- 
larly attracted by the way in which he presented 
arms, so to speak. He poised his piece as one 
would a dart, so that the butt-end of the stock just 
cleared his right ear. I thought what a nice tap he 
would get under the ear if the gun were to go off. 
But what astonished me, since I could see no rabbits 
moving, was that the man remained for a good 
five minutes in this extraordinary state of presented 
arms. At last I made so bold as to ask him if he 
could see a rabbit. He answered cheerfully : ‘ Not 
at this moment, but I saw one quite recently.’ In 
return for this information I gave him a hint on 
the risk run by his right ear. Curiously enough, 
the man turned out to be quite harmless, not only 
to rabbits, but to human beings. After lunch he 
and I were walking among some dead bracken on 
either side of a broad grass cart-track. A rabbit 
was put up, and came at full speed past my colleague 
at a range of about thirty yards—a pretty broadside 
shot over the green cart-track. Two shots were 
fired almost as one, and the rabbit turned a summer- 
sault on the turf. My colleague waved his bowler 
-aloft, saying: ‘Ah, I knew I’d got that beggar— 
had a fair line on ‘im.’ I let him revel in the bliss 
of ignorance. 
I came very near shooting a fellow gun at one 
of these rabbit shoots. I was standing in a flank 
ride, after the beaters, interspersed with guns, had 
