gle jay set up his cry, the cry of something new passing in the
woods. Two or three others joined him; the cry came nearer. A flock
of crossbills went whistling overhead, coming from the same direction.
Then, as I slipped away into an evergreen thicket, a partridge came
whirring up, and darted by me like a brown arrow driven by the bending
branches behind him, flicking the twigs sharply with his wings as he
drove along. And then, on the path of his last forerunner, Old Wally
appeared, his keen eyes searching his murderous gibbetline expectantly.

Now Old Wally was held in great reputation by the Nimrods of the
village, because he hunted partridges, not with "scatter-gun" and
dog,--such amateurish bungling he disdained and swore against,--but in
the good old-fashioned way of stalking with a rifle. And when he brought
his bunch of birds to market, his admirers pointed with pride to the
marks of his wondrous skill. Here was a bird with the head hanging by a
thread of skin; there one with its neck broken; there a furrow along
the top of the head; and here--perfect work!--a partridge with both eyes
gone, showing the course of his unerring bullet.

Not ten yards from my hiding place he took down a partridge from its
gallows, fumbled a pointed stick out of his pocket, ran it through the
bird's neck, and stowed the creature that had died miserably, without
a chance for its life, away in one of his big pockets, a self-satisfied
grin on his face as he glanced down the hedge and saw another bird
swinging. So he followed his hangman's hedge, treating each bird to his
pointed stick, carefully resetting the snares after him and clearing
away the fallen leaves from the fatal pathways. When he came to the
rabbit he harled him dexterously, slipped him over his long gun barrel,
took his bearings in a quick look, and struck over the ridge for another
southern hillside.

Here, at last, was the secret of Wally's boasted skill in partridge
hunting with a rifle. Spite of my indignation at the snare line, the
cruel death which gaped day and night for the game as it ran about
heedlessly in the fancied security of its own coverts, a humorous, half
shame-faced feeling of admiration would creep in as I thought of the old
sinner's cunning, and remembered his look of disdain when he met me one
day, with a "scatter-gun" in my hands and old Don following obediently
at heel. Thinking that in his long life he must have learned many things
in the woods