300 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
one? I shrank from shooting horses with the 
utmost loathing ; yet I more or less had to shoot a 
good many. I always had a horror of a weak cart- 
ridge, or that the poor brute might jerk its head at 
the moment | pulled the trigger. Still, I would 
sooner shoot a horse myself than be compelled to 
watch someone else do it. Such repulsive jobs 
(they cannot be called duties) brought in nothing ; 
the only occasion on which I was offered a fee was 
when a man begged me to shoot a cat. He wanted 
to tie the cat to a post near a saucer of milk; I 
could not stand that. I consented to oblige him if 
he would make the cat run its fastest, which he did, 
and offered me twopence ; and because I refused to 
take it, he, being a baker, sent me a twopenny cake. 
I had to shoot one donkey, and that on a winter 
evening by the light of a very indifferent bicycle- 
lamp. Several things were a greater source of joy 
than the gralloching of rabbits; the aroma is so 
clinging. 
The great quiet woods, the wide fields, the 
hedgerows, the dells, and the hills—these were the 
sweetest joys of the life, and as different from the 
foul discord of a town as heaven must be from hell. 
