FOREST AND STREAM 
431 
The Story of Two Shots 
Wherein is Related the Story of Two Ages of Man and a Partridge 
A boy of fourteen, alert, but too full of life 
to move slowly and cautiously, is walking along 
an old road in the woods, a road that winds 
here and there with meanderings that now seem 
vagrant and purposeless, but once led to the 
various piles of cordwood and logs, for whose 
harvesting it was hewn. 
Goodly trees have since grown up from sap¬ 
lings that the judicious axe then scorned. 
Beeches, whose flat branches are shelves of old 
gold; poplars, turned to towers of brighter 
metal by the same alchemy of autumn, and hem¬ 
locks, pyramids of unchanging green, shadow 
the leaf-strewn forest floor and its inconspicu- 
ous dotting of gray and russet stumps. 
How happy the boy is in the freedom of the 
woods; proud to carry his first own gun, as he 
treads gingerly but somewhat noisily over the 
fallen leaves and dry twigs, scanning with 
quick glances the thickets, imagining himself 
the last Mohican on the warpath, or Natty 
Bumpo scouting in the primeval wilderness. 
Under his breath he tells the confiding chicka¬ 
dees and woodpeckers what undreamed of 
danger they would be in from such a brave, 
were he not in pursuit of nobler game. 
Then he hears a sudden rustle of the dry 
leaves, the quit! quit! of a partridge, catches a 
glimpse of a rapidly-running brown object, that 
on the instant is launched into a flashing thun¬ 
derous flight. 
Impelled by the instinct of the born sports¬ 
man, he throws the gun to his shoulder, and 
scarcely with aim, but in the direction of the 
sound, pulls trigger and fires. 
On the instant he is ashamed of his impulsive 
haste, that fooled him into wasting a precious 
charge on the inanimate evergreen twigs and 
sere leaves that come dropping and floating 
down to his shot, and is thankful that he is the 
only witness of his own foolishness. 
But what is that? Above the patter and 
rustle of falling twigs and leaves comes a dull 
rebounding thud, followed by the rapid beat of 
wings upon the leaf-strewn earth. 'With heart 
beating fast he runs toward the sound, afraid 
to believe his senses, when he sees the noble 
grouse fluttering out feebly his last gasp. 
He cannot be sure that it is not all a dream 
that may vanish in a breath, till he has the bird 
safe in his hand, and then he is faint with joy. 
Was there ever such a shot? Would that all 
the world was here to see, for who can believe 
it just for the telling? 
There never will be another such a bird, nor 
such a shot, for him. He fires a dozen ineffec¬ 
tual shots at fair marks that day, but the glory 
of that one shot would atone for twice as many 
misses, and he need not tell of them, only of 
this, whereof he bears actual proof, though he 
himself can hardly accept it, till again and again 
he tests it by admiring look and touch. 
Years after the killing of grouse on the wing 
has become a matter-of-course occurrence in his 
days of upland shooting, the memory of this 
stands clearest and best. 
By Rowland E. Robinson. 
Sixty years later the old wood road winds 
through the same scene, by some marvel of kind¬ 
liness or oversight, untouched by the devastat¬ 
ing axe, unchanged but by the forest growth of 
half a century and its seemly and decorous de¬ 
cay. A thicker screen of undergrowth borders 
the more faintly traced way. The golden-brown 
shelves of the beech branches sweep more 
broadly above it, the spires of the evergreens 
are nearer the sky and the yellow towers of the 
poplars are budded higher, but they are the 
same trees and beneath them may yet be seen 
the gray stumps and trunks mouldered to russet 
lines, of their ancient brethren who fell when 
these were saplings. 
The gray-bearded man who comes along the 
old wood road wonders at the little change so 
many years have made in the scene of the grand 
achievements of his youth, and in his mind he 
runs over the long calendar to assure himself 
that so many autumns have glowed and faded 
since that happy day. How can he have grown 
old, his ear dull to the voices of the woods, his 
sight dim with the slowly but surely falling veil 
of coming blindness, so that even now the road 
winds into a misty haze just before him, and 
yet these trees be young and lusty? 
As they and the unfaded page of memory 
record the years, it was but a little while ago 
that his heart was almost bursting with pride 
of that first triumph. Would that he might 
once more feel that delicious pang of joy. 
Hark! There is the quit! quit! of a grouse, 
and there another and another and the patter- 
rustle of their retreating footsteps, presently 
launching into sudden flight, vaguely seen in 
swift bolts of gray, hurtling among gray tree 
trunks and variegated foliage. 
True to the old instinct his gun leaps to his 
shoulder, and he fires again and again at the 
swift target. But the quick eye no longer guides 
the aim, the timely finger no longer pulls the 
trigger, and the useless pellets waste themselves 
on the leaves and twigs- 
The woods are full of grouse, as if all the 
birds of the region had congregated here to 
mock his failing sight and skill. On every side 
they burst away from him like rockets, and his 
quick but futile charges in rapid succession are 
poured in their direction, yet not a bird falls, 
nor even a feather wavers down through the 
still October air. His dim eyes refuse to marR 
down the birds that alight nearest; he can only 
vaguely follow their flight by the whirring rush 
of wings and the click of intercepting branches. 
He is not ashamed of his loss of skill, only 
grieved to know that his shooting days are 
over, yet he is glad there is no one near to 
see his failure. He makes renunciation of all 
title to the name of a crack shot, too well know¬ 
ing that this is no brief lapse of skill, but the 
final, inevitable falling off of the quick eye and 
sure hand. 
Slowly and sadly he makes his way to where 
the shaded path merges into the sunny clear¬ 
ing. There, from the cover of the last bush, a 
laggard bird springs as if thrown from a cata¬ 
pult, describing in h'is flight an arc of a great 
circle, and clearly defined against the steel-blue 
sky. 
(Continued on page 454.) 
His Old Eyes Refused to Mark Down, But Don’s Eyes Are Young. 
