But, oh, the fun of those early morning starts!— Page 530. 
mellow and remote, was a thing I had 
fondly dreamed and doubtless written 
about. But it is such a rare joy, even in 
youth, when life obligingly comes true to 
fiction. It proved too much for me. 
Despite the deplorable lack of a ghost, I 
could not sleep that night. 
But for that matter neither did my host, 
and he had lived there all his life and his 
ancestors before him. The next morn- 
ing, when with chattering teeth he came 
to wake me at chilly dawn, he explained 
that he never could sleep the first night 
before shooting. Well, even to this day, 
though the years have brought us deeper 
joys than good hunting and keener sor- 
rows than bad weather, we are usually too 
excited to sleep much on the eve of shoot- 
ing. He, it seems, is continually startled 
by the old horror of not waking until noon 
and I by the tantalizing nightmare of a 
shell stuck in my gun while a thousand 
birds are describing graceful parabolas 
about my head. 
529 
