wary bird; but the discharge
of Harry's piece assured me, as I thought, that further watch was
needless; and stupidly enough I dropped the muzzle of my gun.

Just at the self-same point of time--"Mark! mark, Frank!" shouted
Archer, "mark! there are a brace of them!"--and as he spoke, gliding
with speed scarcely inferior to a bullet's flight upon their balanced
pinions, the noble birds swept past me, so close that I could have
struck them with a riding whip.

Awfully fluttered was I--I confess--but by a species of involuntary and
instinctive consideration I rallied instantly, and became cool. The
grouse had seen me, and wheeled diverse; one darting to the right,
through a small opening between a cedar bush and a tall hemlock--the
other skimming through the open oak woods a little toward the left.

At such a crisis thought comes in a second's space; and I have often
fancied that in times of emergency or great surprise, a man deliberates
more promptly, and more prudently withal, than when he has full time to
let his second thought trench on his first and mar it. So was it in this
case with me. At half a glance I saw, that if I meant to get both birds,
the right-hand fugitive must be the first, and that with all due speed;
for but a few yards further he would have gained a brake which would
have laughed to scorn Lord Kennedy or Harry T--r.

Pitching my gun up to my shoulder, both barrels loaded with Eley's red
wire cartridge No. 6, I gave him a snap shot, and had the satisfaction
of seeing him keeled well over, not wing-tipped or leg-broken, but
fairly riddled by the concentrated charge of something within thirty
yards. Turning as quick as light, I caught a fleet sight of the other,
which by a rapid zig-zag was now flying full across my front, certainly
over forty-five yards distant, among a growth of thick-set saplings--the
hardest shot, in my opinion, that can be selected to test a quick and
steady sportsman. I gave it him, and down he came too--killed dead--that
I knew, for I had shot full half a yard before him. Just as I dropped my
butt to load, the hill began to echo with the vociferous yells of master
Dan, the quick redoubled cracks of Harry's heavy dog-whip, and his
incessant rating--"Down, cha-arge! For sha-ame! Dan! Dan! down cha-arge!
for sha-ame! "--broken at times by the impatient oaths of Tom Draw, in
the gulley, who had, it seems, knocked down two woodcock, neither of
which he could bag, owing to the dept