is called--which Mike Sandford considered
the best-nosed dog he had ever broken--a capital young pointer dog of
K---'s, which has since turned out, as I hear, superlative, and P---'s old
and stanch setter Count. It was the middle of a fine autumn day, and the
scenting was very uncommonly good. One of our beaters flushed a bevy of
quail very wide of us, and they came over our heads down a steep
hillside, and all lighted in a small circular hollow, without a bit of
underbrush or even grass, full of tall thrifty oak trees, of perhaps
twenty-five years' growth. They were not much out of gun-shot, and we
all three distinctly saw them light; and I observed them flap and fold
their wings as they settled. We walked straight to the spot, and beat it
five or six times over, not one of our dogs ever drawing, and not one
bird rising. We could not make it out; my friends thought they had
treed, and laughed at me when I expressed my belief that they were still
before us, under our very noses. The ground was covered only by a deep
bed of sere decaying oak leaves. Well, we went on, and beat all round
the neighborhood within a quarter of a mile, and did not find a bird,
when lo! at the end of perhaps half an hour, we heard them calling--
followed the cry back to that very hollow; the instant we entered it,
all the three dogs made game, drawing upon three several birds, roaded
them up, and pointed steady, and we had half an hour's good sport, and
we were all convinced that the birds had been there all the time. I have
seen many instances of the same kind, and more particularly with
wing-tipped birds, but none I think so tangible as this!"

"Well, I am not a convert, Harry; but, as the Chancellor said, I doubt."

"And that I consider not a little, from such a positive wretch as you
are; but come, we have done breakfast, and it's broad daylight. Come,
Timothy, on with the bag and belts; he breakfasted before we had got up,
and gave the dogs a bite."

"Which dogs do you take, Harry; and do you use cartridge?"

"Oh! the setters for the morning; they are the only fellows for the
stubble; we should be all day with the cockers; even setters, as we must
break them here for wood shooting, have not enough of speed or dash for
the open. Cartridges? yes! I shall use a loose charge in my right, and a
blue cartridge in my left; later in the season I use a blue in my right
and a red in my left. It just makes the difference between killing with
both,