owded on a breakfast table, as sportsmen only have a right
to make; nor they, unless they have walked ten, or galloped half as many
miles, before it.

Before we had been in an hour, Harry once again roused us out. All had
been, during our absence, fully prepared by the indefatigable Tim; who,
as the day before, accoutered with spare shot and lots of provender,
seemed to grudge us each morsel that we ate, so eager was he to see us
take the field in season.

Off we went then; but what boots it to repeat a thrice told tale;
suffice it, that the dogs worked as well as dogs can work; that birds
were plentiful, and lying good; that we fagged hard, and shot on the
whole passably, so that by sunset we had exceeded Harry's forty brace by
fifteen birds, and got beside nine couple and a half of woodcock; which
we found, most unexpectedly, basking themselves in the open meadow,
along the grassy banks of a small rill, without a bush or tree within
five hundred yards of them.

Evening had closed before we reached the well known tavern-stand, and
the merry blaze of the fire, and many candles, showed us, while yet far
distant, that due preparations were in course for our entertainment.

"What have we here?" cried Harry, as we reached the door--"Race horses?
Why, Tom, by heaven! we've got the Flying Dutchman here again; now for a
night of it."

And so in truth it was, a most wet, and most jovial one, seasoned with
no small wit; but of that, more anon.

DAY THE FOURTH

When we had entered Tom's hospitable dwelling, and delivered over our
guns to be duly cleaned, and the dogs to be suppered, by Tim Matlock, I
passed through the parlor, on my way to my own crib, where I found
Archer in close confabulation with a tall rawboned Dutchman, with a keen
freckled face, small 'cute gray eyes, looking suspiciously about from
under the shade of a pair of straggling sandy eyebrows, small reddish
whiskers, and a head of carroty hair as rough and tangled as a fox's
back.

His aspect was a wondrous mixture of sneakingness and smartness, and his
expression did most villainously belie him, if he were not as sharp a
customer as ever wagged an elbow, or betted on a horse-race.

"Frank," exclaimed Harry, as I entered, "I make you know Mr. McTaggart,
better known hereabouts as the Flying Dutchman, though how he came by a
Scotch name I can't pretend to say; he keeps the best quarter horses,
and plays the best hand of whist in the country; and now,