wings, five sharp reports in quick succession and four birds down!  Another, wild with fright, rises straight up for twenty feet and darts off behind us, but his beautiful head droops as the crack of my last barrel resounds on the air and a cloud of feathers floats downward.  The shot has struck him in the line of flight, and he goes to the ground with a bounce, some thirty yards away, as if hurled there by a vigorous arm.  The well-trained dogs come to the “Down! charge!” while we reload our guns, and then seek the dead birds and bring them carefully in to us.

Leaving the broken covey to be worked up on our return, we push on to another part of the large pea-field, where, perched upon the topmost limb of a tall dead pine, we see a red-tailed hawk engaged in quiet observation.  There is no surer sign of birds, but it takes close hunting to find them, for they dare not move about while their savage enemy is on the watch.  As we approach the hawk stretches out his neck, jerks his wings two or three times and oscillates his ungainly body, and then, with a loud scream of angry disappointment, he is off.  The tree stands in a little piece of sedge, not far from a dense growth of pine-saplings, and we know that the moment the hawk left his perch the birds started for the cover, and our only chance for shooting is to head them off and turn them.  The dogs have struck the running trail, and their action is totally different from what it was with the first covey.  Crouching flat to the ground, they glide after the startled birds with a snake-like movement, now stopping, now running swiftly in.  Suddenly Di leaves the trail and dashes off at full speed to the right.  Making a wide circuit, she skirts the pines, and, turning short round, comes to a firm stand in the very face of the retreating covey, while Sancho lies prone with his nose between his paws.  It is an old trick of hers thus to “huddle” running birds, and we follow her example, come up behind her, and get six with four barrels as the birds rise in a bunch.

But if the reader follows us too closely, he will have all the fatigue of a long tramp without the compensation of healthful excitement and full game-pockets.  Thirty-five fine birds in a pile on the pantry-table offer a capital raison d’etre for weary feet and soiled fingers when we reach home just in time for the supper-bell.  There have been some arrivals while we were gone, for Christmas is near at hand, and the old house is filling up with guests.  To-morrow the “St. John’s Hunting-Club” has its monthly deer-hunt and dinner at Black Oak, and we need a good night’s rest to prepare us for an experience the omission of which would render imperfect any truthful reminiscence of life at the old plantation.