Part 3 (1/2)

”That's right And look here, Mr Quater to advise you now, as you advised me yesterday Shot does not travel so fast as ball, and the pheasant is a bird that is generally going much quicker than you think Now, here we are Charles will show you your stand Good luck to you”

Tencovert, all the seven guns being posted within sight of each other So occupied was I in watching the preliminaries, which were quite new to me, that I allowed first a hare and then a hen pheasant to depart without firing at them, which hen pheasant, by the way, curved round and was beautifully killed by Van Koop, who stood two guns off upon ht

”Look here, Allan,” said Scroope, ”if you are going to beat your African friend you had better wake up, for you won't do it by ad the scenery or that squirrel on a tree”

So I woke up Just at that ht it meant a cock pheasant, and was astonished when I saw a beautiful brown bird with a long beak flitting towards h the tops of the oak trees

”Am I to shoot at that?” I asked

”Of course It is a woodcock,” answered Scroope

By this ti past me within ten yards I fired and killed it, for where it had been appeared nothing but a cloud of feathers It was a quick and clever shot, or so I thought But when Charles stepped out and picked frohter went down the whole line of guns and loaders

”I say, old chap,” said Scroope, ”if you will use No 3 shot, let your birds get a little farther off you”

The incident upset me so much that immediately afterwards I missed three easy pheasants in succession, while Van Koop added two to his bag

Scroope shook his head and Charles groaned audibly Now that I was not in competition with his master he had become suddenly anxious that I should win, for in some mysterious way the news of that bet had spread, and st the keeper class

”Here you co pheasant

It was an extraordinarily high pheasant, flushed, I think, outside the covert by a stop, so high that, as it travelled down the line, although three guns fired at it, including Van Koop, none of thenall's advice, far in front

Its flight changed Still it travelled through the air, but with the ht, dead

”That's better!” said Scroope, while Charles grinned all over his round face, :

”Wiped his eye that tiive h, oddly enough, I found that it was the high and difficult pheasants which I killed and the easy ones that I was apt to muff But Van Koop, as certainly a finished artist, killed both

At the next stand Lord Ragnall, who had been observing my somewhat indifferent perforuns

”I see the tall ones are your line, Mr Quateret some here”

On this occasion ere placed in a dip between two long coverts which lay about three hundred yards apart That which was being beaten proved full of pheasants, and the shooting of those picked guns was really a thing to see I did quite well here, nearly, but not altogether, as well as Lord Ragnall hireat deal, for he was a lovely shot

”Bravo!” he said at the end of the beat ”I believe you have got a chance of winning your 5, after all”

When, however, at luncheon, more than an hour later, I found that I was thirty pheasants behind my adversary, I shook my head, and so did everybody else On the whole, that luncheon, of which we partook in a keeper's house, was a very pleasant h Van Koop talked so continuously and in such a boastful strain that I saw it irritated our host and soentlean to patronizeon with ” of late years

I replied, ”Fairly well”

”Then you should tell our friends some of your famous stories, which I pro: ”You see, they are different fro”