MY BROTHER KEEPERS 209 
pheasant within half a day’s walk of his beat must 
be one of his tame birds. I remember myself being 
the object of a terrible torrent of words from a 
keeper, one of whose woods ran along the side of 
my boundary. My ground near this wood consisted 
of seven hundred acres of partridge-fields, on which 
some two hundred wild pheasants were bred annually. 
Two other shoots had coverts adjoining my end 
boundaries. As all three parties concerned went in 
for a few hand-reared pheasants, I refrained from 
taking advantage of the opportunities October pre- 
sented, only bagging an occasional good bird in 
the course of partridge-driving. The number we 
bagged in this particular season amounted to seven ! 
I had been incapacitated by illness, and the 
‘house’ had run right out of game. So on the first 
day on which I was able to get about, though it 
was as much as I could manage to get my gun to 
my shoulder while a flying pheasant remained in 
sight, I tried my luck in a few dells near the 
boundary. I had missed several birds with unusual 
ease, when a hen appeared at the invitation of my 
old dog, and rising to a good height, gave me 
extra time to ‘align my piece.’ Shedid not respond 
to my effort by falling to the shot, but more or less 
towered, to fall finally with a thud on a bare field, 
in full view of some copse-workers in the adjoining 
wood. I gathered from subsequent events that they 
told the keeper, probably on the chance of a pint 
14 
