“AN ENGLISH DEER-PARR. 206 
hollow ; it was a trail made by the squire, one of whose 
favourite strolls was in this direction. This summer 
morning, taking his gun, he followed the trail once 
more. 
The grass was longer and coarser under the shadow 
of the limes, and upborne on the branches were numerous 
little sticks which had dropped from the rookery above. 
Sometimes there was an overthrown nest like a sack of 
twigs turned out on the turf, such as the hedgers rake 
together after fagoting. Looking up into the trees on a 
summer's day not a bird could be seen, till suddenly 
there was a quick ‘jack-jack’ above, as a daw started , 
from his hole or from where the great boughs joined the 
trunk. The squire’s path went down the hollow till it 
deepened into a thinly wooded coomb, through which 
ran the streamlet coming from the wheat-fields under 
the road. As the coomb opened, the squire went along 
a hedge near but not quite to the top. Years ago the 
coomb had been quarried for chalk, and the pits were 
only partly concealed by the bushes: the yellow spikes 
of wild mignonette flourished on the very hedge, and 
even half way down the precipices. From the ledge 
.. above, the eye could see into these and into the recesses 
“", between the brushwood. The squire’s son, Mr. Martin, 
used to come here with his rook-rifle, for he could always 
get a shot at a rabbit in the hollow. They could not 
see him approach; and the ball, if it missed, did no 
damage, being caught as in a bowl. Rifles in England, 
even when their range is but a hundred yards or so, are 
not to be used without caution. Some one may be in 
the hedge nutting, or a labourer may be eating his 
luncheon in the shelter ; it is never possible to tell who 
may be behind the screen of brambles through which 
the bullet slips so easily. Into these hollows Martin. 
