^ail and Partridge 141 



shell, going down singly or in couples all about 

 the field. They keep a perfectly straight 

 course for maybe two hundred yards, then 

 wheel, usually across the wind, and go down 

 with a long very gradual circling slant. A 

 covey put up and not fired upon does not 

 scatter, but circles, or rather wheels before 

 settling just as do the worse frightened birds. 

 Birds scattered by a volley lie close for several 

 hours, until nightfall indeed if they are scat- 

 tered in the afternoon, never stirring until 

 they give out the assembly-call and find it 

 answered. 



There was never any killing out of whole 

 coveys at White Oaks, not even when the 

 neighbors gathered for an all-day's hunt there. 

 Often then there were a dozen guns in hands 

 that knew what to do with them. Shooting 

 began out in the tangle upon the edge of the 

 flat-woods. By twelve o'clock the hunters 

 were commonly at the creek. Mrs. Baker 

 sent down dinner, and they ate beside the 

 spring, while the dogs, tired and thirsty, swam 

 about in the creek, lapping and laving their 

 fill. There was a fire on the bank for boil- 

 ing cofFee. Mrs. Baker would never have in- 

 sulted her own palate nor that of a guest, with 

 cofFee made a mile from the place it was to be 

 drunk. Sometimes Patsy went along with the 

 dinner baskets and the coffeepot. Both were 



