In the courtyard a number of stout forked stakes were used for putting the dairy buckets on, after being cleaned, to dry.  No attempt was made to separate the business from the inner life of the house.  Here in front these oaken buckets, scoured till nearly white, their iron handles polished like silver, were close under the eyes of any one looking out.  By the front door a besom leaned against the wall that every comer might clean the mud from his boots; and you stepped at once from the threshold into the sitting-room.  A lane led past the garden, if that could be called a lane which widened into a field and after rain was flooded so deeply as to be impassable to foot passengers.

The morning we had chosen was fine; and after shaking hands with old Farmer ‘Willum,’ whose shooting days were over, we entered the lane, and by it the fields.  The meadows were small, enclosed with double-mounds, and thickly timbered, so that as the ground was level you could not see beyond the field in which you stood, and upon looking over the gate might surprise a flock of pigeons, a covey of partridges, or a rabbit out feeding.  Though the tinted leaves were fast falling, the hedges were still full of plants and vegetation that prevented seeing through them.  The ‘kuck-kuck’ of the redwings came from the bushes—­the first note of approaching winter—­and the tips of the rushes were dead.  Red haws on the hawthorn and hips on the briar sprinkled the hedge with bright spots of colour.

The two spaniels went with such an eager rush into a thick double-mound, dashing heedlessly through the nettles and under the brambles, that we hastened to get one on each side of the hedge.  A rustling—­a short bark; another, then a movement among the rushes in the ditch, evidently not made by the dogs; then a silence.  But the dogs come back, and as they give tongue the rabbit rushes past a bare spot on the slope of the bank.  I fire—­a snap shot—­and cut out some fur, but do no further harm; the pellets bury themselves in the earth.  But, startled and perhaps just stung by a stray shot, the rabbit bolts fairly at last twenty yards in front of Orion, the spaniel tearing at his heels.

Up goes the double-barrel with a bright gleam as the sunlight glances on it.  A second of suspense:  then from the black muzzle darts a cylinder of tawny flame and an opening cone of white smoke:  a sharp report rings on the ear.  The rabbit rolls over and over, and is dead before the dog can seize him.  After harling the rabbit, Orion hangs him high on a projecting branch, so that the man who is following us at a distance may easily find the game.  He is a labourer, and we object to have him with us, as we know he would be certain to get in the way.

We then tried a corner where two of these large mounds, meeting, formed a small copse in which grew a quantity of withy and the thick grasses that always border the stoles.  A hare bolted almost directly the dogs went in:  hares trust in their speed, rabbits in doubling for cover.  I fired right and left, and missed:  fairly missed with both barrels.  Orion jumped upon the mound from the other side, and from that elevation sent a third cartridge after her.