THE PHEASANT 
Pheasant was an alien to the countryside. He 
was coop-hatched, and earlier in the summer 
had been fostered on grain, with hundreds of 
his own kind, in the newly stocked coverts of 
Ballydare, where they were vigilantly protected 
from poachers and foxes ; but as the autumn 
drew on, and his wing power increased, he 
strayed farther away from the shelter of the 
home-coverts, lured by the ripening corn and 
blackberries. The journey took him three days, 
travelling leisurely along the dense hedgerows 
which are the highways of the wild folk, and 
he arrived at Tonsella one sunny afternoon. The 
little wood was very still except for the chit- 
tering of the tits in the branches overhead, and 
for the humming of a thousand long-whiskered 
insect - things with flimsy wings, which 
hovered back and forwards over the blackberry 
clusters. In those mellow September days, 
Creaban had never yet heard the tap of a 
beater's stick, or known the whistle of shot 
around him ; nevertheless within the past two 
days he had already found out that the free 
woods and hedgerows were not like the well- 
preserved plantations of Ballydare, and he 
entered sedately with one timid eye on the 
covert. 
At the top of the wood there was no path 
between the trees it belonged altogether to the 
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