250 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
and half the amount he fetched above that sum 
after deducting expenses, if | would: take the dog 
to a London auction sale. There was present a 
man who had bought a brace of the dog’s blood 
brothers and sisters, and he bought him for twenty 
guineas—the top price of sixty odd animals. I 
felt anything but calm standing on that raised plat- 
form with my dog, especially when the auctioneer 
repeated, ‘Nineteen guineas I’m bid,’ and. made 
ready his hammer. 
Another time, a man had agreed to buy a ten- 
weeks-old retriever puppy for fifty shillings. The 
day before I was to send the puppy off I washed 
him, and gave him to an under-keeper to take 
for a run, Before going indoors to have his 
dinner, the man tied the puppy to a hurdle-fence. 
When he came out the puppy was hanging dead 
the other side. In tying a dog to a fence of any 
sort there is always a risk of his hanging himself. 
I went to see a keeper, hoping to buy from him 
one of two little black spaniels which I heard he 
had left out of a litter. I asked the price, and he 
said he did not think a pound too much for the 
two. I agreed with him, and went home with 
the two puppies and sixpence left in my pocket. 
The same day I met another keeper, to whom I 
sold one of them for the same price as I gave for 
it. Not long afterwards he told me it had fetched 
ten guineas. I gave a middle-aged retriever that 
