CHAPTER III

TREE-SHOOTING:  A FISHING EXPEDITION

Just on the verge and borderland of the territory that could be ranged in safety there grew a stunted oak in a mound beside the brook.  Perhaps the roots had been checked by the water; for the tree, instead of increasing in bulk, had expended its vigour in branches so crooked that they appeared entangled in each other.  This oak was a favourite perching-place, because of its position:  it could also be more easily climbed than straight-grown timber, having many boughs low down the trunk.  With a gun it is difficult to ascend a smooth tree; these boughs therefore were a great advantage.

One warm afternoon late in the summer I got up into this oak; and took a seat astride a large limb, with the main trunk behind like the back of a chair and about twenty feet above the mound.  Some lesser branches afforded a fork on which the gun could be securely lodged, and a limb of considerable size came across in front.  Leaning both arms on this, a view could be obtained below and on three sides easily and without effort.

The mound immediately beneath was grown over with thick blackthorn, a species of cover that gives great confidence to game.  A kick or blow upon the bushes with a stick will not move anything in an old blackthorn thicket.  A man can scarcely push through it:  nothing but a dog can manage to get about.  On the meadow side there was no ditch, only a narrow fringe of tall pointed grass and rushes, with one or two small furze bushes projecting out upon the sward.  Behind such bushes, on the slope of the mound, is rather a favourite place for a rabbit to sit out, or a hare to have a form.

The brook was shallow towards the hedge, and bordered with flags, among which rose up one tall bunch of beautiful reeds.  Some little way up the brook a pond opened from it.  At the entrance the bar of mud had hardly an inch of water; within there was a clear small space, and the rest all weeds, with moorhens’ tracks.  The farther side of the pond was covered with bramble bushes.  It is a good plan to send the dogs into bushes growing on the banks of ponds; for though rabbits dislike water itself they are fond of sitting out in such cover near it.  A low railing enclosed the side towards me:  the posts had slipped by the giving way of the soil, and hung over the still pool.

One of the rails—­of willow—­was eaten out into hollow cavities by the wasps, which came to it generation after generation for the materials of their nests.  The particles they detach are formed into a kind of paste or paper:  in time they will quite honeycomb a pole.  The third side of the pond shelved to the ‘leaze,’ that the cattle might drink.  From it a narrow track went across the broad field up the rising ground to the distant gateway leading to the meadows, where they grazed on the aftermath.  Marching day by day, one after the other in single file, to the drinking-place, the hoofs of the herd had cut a clean path in the turf, two or three inches deep and trodden hard.  The reddish soil thus exposed marked the winding line athwart the field, through the tussocky bunches.