lump of trees at the autocrat's behest, he strove to soothe his ruffled
feelings by the argument that it was probably the absolutely correct
deportment for a shooting party, his mind remained unconvinced.
Moreover, in parting from him, the keeper had dropped a blunt injunction
about firing up or down the lane, the tone even more than the matter of
which nettled him.

To cap all, when he presently ventured to stroll about a little from
the spot on which he had been planted, he caught a glimpse against the
skyline of the distant Lord Plowden, comfortably seated on the stool
which his valet had been carrying. It seemed to Thorpe at that moment
that he had never wanted to sit down so much before in his life--and he
turned on his heel in the wet grass with a grunt of displeasure.

This mood vanished utterly a few moments later. The remote sounds had
begun to come to him, of boys shouting and dogs barking, in the recesses
of the strip of woodland which the lane skirted, and at these he
hastened back to his post. It did not seem to him a good place, and when
he heard the reports of guns to right and left of him, and nothing came
his way, he liked it less than ever; it had become a matter of offended
pride with him, however, to relieve the keeper of no atom of the
responsibility he had taken upon himself. If Lord Plowden's guest had
no sport, the blame for it should rest upon Lord Plowden's over-arrogant
keeper. Then a noise of a different character assailed his ears,
punctuated as it were by distant boyish cries of "mark!" These cries,
and the buzzing sound as of clockwork gone wrong which they accompanied
and heralded, became all at once a most urgent affair of his own.
He strained his eyes upon the horizon of the thicket--and, as if by
instinct, the gun sprang up to adjust its sight to this eager gaze, and
followed automatically the thundering course of the big bird, and then,
taking thought to itself, leaped ahead of it and fired. Thorpe's first
pheasant reeled in the air, described a somersault, and fell like a
plummet.

He stirred not a step, but reloaded the barrel with a hand shaking for
joy. From where he stood he could see the dead bird; there could never
have been a cleaner "kill." In the warming glow of his satisfaction in
himself, there kindled a new liking of a different sort for Plowden
and Balder. He owed to them, at this belated hour of his life, a novel
delight of indescribable charm. There came to him, from