r-bush. Are these not noble trees? For how many
years have they stood thus interlocking their strong boughs like brethren!
While Columbus was asking a supper for his boy at the convent door, three
centuries and a half ago, these same trees were here, scarcely younger
than now. Yonder is the hill we saw from the rude bridge below the
mill-dam. Let us clamber over the log-fence and get into the clearing.

Well, Peter, this hill that we are on is just one mile from home, though
it looks not half the distance. Is this not a glorious view? Hill and
valley spread out like a map before us! The snow lies in patches upon the
fields, and the sun is lighting up the tinned spire of the village church,
which, as the stage passed it yesterday, you thought looked like a
superannuated old man with a martin-cage upon his crooked back. There is
the old homestead looking at us through the locusts that surround it, and
there are the orchards off to the right, which in a few weeks will be
white with blossoms. Now, steady, my boys! Do you see that flock of
pigeons? Wait till they pass us, that our shot may take effect on their
backs. Whang! hack!! bang!!! What! three barrels off and only a handful of
tail-feathers! How they opened as we fired, as if to let the shot go
through. Hist! don't stir! Look up softly into the dry top of this
hemlock, right over our heads: four, five, six! all in a huddle. I'll
fetch some of them with my last barrel. Snap! fiz! confound the cap! Hold
still, they see us. I've got a fresh cap on: bang! Here comes one,
tumbling through the limbs on to the snow. Is he not a handsome bird; with
his glossy purple breast and slender blue neck! Load quickly, and let us
be ready for the next flock.

Hear them scream and coo in the wood to the right. Hear the leaves crackle
down on that slope where the snow is off under those tall beeches. The
ground is fairly blue with them. Softly there over the dry brush! See them
turning up the leaves for beech-nuts: they are all moving this way. Down,
behind this log: they are not twenty yards off. Cock both barrels; and now
fire! What a stunning sound they make, like the roaring of a tornado!
Look, they have settled down again on the other side of the ravine. Well,
here, Peter, what do you think of the fun now?--fourteen cock pigeons and
one hen, to be divided between us. This is what _I_ call sport: none of
your reed-birds and meadow-larks, such as cockney sportsmen frighten away
from t