s racing back to the covert, as they thought, for
very life; but, as a matter of fact--and you shall see--it was to very
death. The blower of whistles was stationed there to drive back into
the covert any pheasants who were so misguided as to wish to roam
thence into the fields and away.

Now, that old reprobate of a pheasant of ours was a pretty confirmed
runner, anyway. He had trained himself to it. Yet never in all his
checkered life was he conscious of a more awful desire to flee by means
of the wings that God had given him. The weakness was over in a few
seconds, and he crept on; but it was a near thing while it lasted. He
passed, however, away from the danger zone, resisting temptation, and
it was as well.

As he went there burst forth, at the opposite end of the big covert to
that at which he had come out, a sudden, quick shot. It echoed away
and away back among the woods, clattering and banging like great doors
shutting. The old cock-pheasant stopped to listen; he cocked his green
head on one side; he stood with one foot daintily uplifted: and in the
same instant there burst upon the air a rending, crashing succession of
shots, worse than ragged volley-firing, which almost made him jump. It
had begun--the big shoot over _his_ covert, the largest, the best, the
richest in pheasants, which had been saved for this--"the day" had
begun. When it ended very few pheasants would be left alive, for word
had gone forth that it was to be thinned down, almost shot out, and
that not a cock must escape.

He, our own cock-pheasant, might have chuckled--as a cock-pheasant can,
and will, very low and softly to himself, if you are close enough to
hear him--if something had not very suddenly and very mysteriously said
"phtt!" just like that, close beside him. The old bird's head snicked
round, right round, almost hindpart before; but he made no other
movement. The sound was new to him, and of a strangely sinister
import. Also, there was a little splayed hole in the ground, as if a
walking-stick had been poked in there, close beside him, which had not
been there before.

He was still staring when something, singing a little, high-pitched
song in a minor key to itself, came romping through the silent air,
and, with an oddly emphasized and emphatic "phtt!" landed between his
feet. It bored a hole just like the first thing, and it spat dirt up
into his face.

The third mystery thing clipped three feathers from his b