hing to see. I did quite well here, nearly, but not altogether, as well
as Lord Ragnall himself, though that is saying a great deal, for he was
a lovely shot.

"Bravo!" he said at the end of the beat. "I believe you have got a
chance of winning your L5, after all."

When, however, at luncheon, more than an hour later, I found that I
was thirty pheasants behind my adversary, I shook my head, and so did
everybody else. On the whole, that luncheon, of which we partook in
a keeper's house, was a very pleasant meal, though Van Koop talked so
continuously and in such a boastful strain that I saw it irritated our
host and some of the other gentlemen, who were very pleasant people. At
last he began to patronize me, asking me how I had been getting on with
my "elephant-potting" of late years.

I replied, "Fairly well."

"Then you should tell our friends some of your famous stories, which
I promise I won't contradict," he said, adding: "You see, they are
different from us, and have no experience of big-game shooting."

"I did not know that you had any, either, Sir Junius," I answered,
nettled. "Indeed, I thought I remembered your telling me in Africa that
the only big game you had ever shot was an ox sick with the red-water.
Anyway, shooting is a business with me, not an amusement, as it is to
you, and I do not talk shop."

At this he collapsed amid some laughter, after which Scroope, the most
loyal of friends, began to repeat exploits of mine till my ears tingled,
and I rose and went outside to look at the weather.

It had changed very much during luncheon. The fair promise of the
morning had departed, the sky was overcast, and a wind, blowing in
strong gusts, was rising rapidly, driving before it occasional scurries
of snow.

"My word," said Lord Ragnall, who had joined me, "the Lake
covert--that's our great stand here, you know--will take some shooting
this afternoon. We ought to kill seven hundred pheasants in it with this
team, but I doubt if we shall get five. Now, Mr. Quatermain, I am going
to stand Sir Junius Fortescue and you back in the covert, where you
will have the best of it, as a lot of pheasants will never face the lake
against this wind. What is more, I am coming with you, if I may, as
six guns are enough for this beat, and I don't mean to shoot any more
to-day."

"I fear that you will be disappointed," I said nervously.

"Oh, no, I sha'n't," he answered. "I tell you frankly that if only you
could ha