h and instability of the wet bog.

"Quit! quit! cuss you, quit there, leatherin that brute! Quit, I say, or
I'll send a shot at you! Come here, Archer--I say, come here!--there be
the darndest lot of droppins here, I ever see--full twenty cock, I
swon!"

But still the scourge continued to resound, and still the raving of the
spaniel excited Tom's hot ire.

"Frank Forester!" exclaimed he once again. "Do see now--Harry missed
them partridge, and so he licks the poor dumb brute for it. I wish I
were a spannel, and he'd try it on with me!"

"I will, too," answered Archer, with a laugh; "I will, too, if you go
wish it, though you are not a spaniel, nor any thing else half so good.
And why, pray, should I not scourge this wild little imp? he ran slap
into the best pack of ruffed grouse I have seen this two years--fifteen
or sixteen birds. I wonder they're not scattered--it's full late to find
them packed!"

"Did you kill ere a one?" Tom holloaed; "not one, either of you!"

"I did," answered Harry, "I nailed the old cock bird, and a rare dog he
is!--two pounds, good weight, I warrant him," he added, weighing him as
he spoke. "Look at the crimson round his eye, Frank, like a cock
pheasant's, and his black ruff or tippet--by George! but he's a beauty!
And what did you do?" he continued.

"I bagged a brace--the only two that crossed me."

"Did you, though?" exclaimed Archer, with no small expression of
surprise; "did you, though?--that's prime work--it takes a thorough
workmen to bag a double shot upon October grouse. But come, we must go
down to Tom; hark how the old hound keeps bawling."

Well, down we went. The spaniels quickly retrieved his dead birds, and
flushed some fifteen more, of which we gave a clean account--Harry
making up for lost time by killing six cock, right and left, almost
before they topped the bushes--seven more fell to me, but single birds
all of them--and but one brace to Tom, who now began to wax indignant;
for Archer, as I saw, for fun's sake, was making it a point to cut down
every bird that rose to him, before he could get up his gun; and then
laughed at him for being fat and slow. But the laugh was on Tom's side
before long--for while we were yet in the valley, the report of a gun
came faintly down the wind from beyond the hill, and as we all looked
out attentively, a grouse skimmed the brow, flying before the wind at a
tremendous pace, and skated across the valley without stooping from his