ation of the occupier.
There was a certainty of sport of some kind, because the place had
remained almost unchanged for the last century. It is 'improvement' that
drives away game and necessitates the pheasant preserve.

The low whitewashed walls of the house were of a dull yellowish hue from
the beating of the weather. They supported a vast breadth of thatched
roof drilled by sparrows and starlings. Under the eaves the swallows'
nests adhered, and projecting shelves were fixed to prevent any
inconvenience from them. Some of the narrow windows were still darkened
with the black boarding put up in the days of the window tax.

In the courtyard a number of stout forked stakes were used for putting
the dairy buckets on, after being cleaned, to dry. No attempt was made
to separate the business from the inner life of the house. Here in front
these oaken buckets, scoured till nearly white, their iron handles
polished like silver, were close under the eyes of any one looking out.
By the front door a besom leaned against the wall that every comer might
clean the mud from his boots; and you stepped at once from the threshold
into the sitting-room. A lane led past the garden, if that could be
called a lane which widened into a field and after rain was flooded so
deeply as to be impassable to foot passengers.

The morning we had chosen was fine; and after shaking hands with old
Farmer 'Willum,' whose shooting days were over, we entered the lane, and
by it the fields. The meadows were small, enclosed with double-mounds,
and thickly timbered, so that as the ground was level you could not see
beyond the field in which you stood, and upon looking over the gate
might surprise a flock of pigeons, a covey of partridges, or a rabbit
out feeding. Though the tinted leaves were fast falling, the hedges were
still full of plants and vegetation that prevented seeing through them.
The 'kuck-kuck' of the redwings came from the bushes--the first note of
approaching winter--and the tips of the rushes were dead. Red haws on
the hawthorn and hips on the briar sprinkled the hedge with bright spots
of colour.

The two spaniels went with such an eager rush into a thick double-mound,
dashing heedlessly through the nettles and under the brambles, that we
hastened to get one on each side of the hedge. A rustling--a short bark;
another, then a movement among the rushes in the ditch, evidently not
made by the dogs; then a silence. But the dogs come back,