goes, and of alighting high, say about two hundred yards away, and trusting to the trick which fools all other enemies to fool the man.  Following the straight line of his flight, scanning the tree-tops, will you note at last, upon some great limb and close to the tree’s trunk, an upright thing, slender, still-hued, silent and motionless.  It is so like the wood it well might miss the tyro.  It is not unsportsmanlike, it is in fair chase to shoot, and then there comes to the ground, with a great thump, the cock of the northern woods, and you have one of the prizes man gets by slaying.  But this is only in the wood.  In the open it is quite another thing.  What a toothsome bird, too, is your ruffed grouse, how plump and yet gamey to the taste!  You must know how to cook him, though.  He must be broiled, split open neatly and well larded with good butter, for not so juicy even as the quail is the ruffed grouse, and he must have aid.  But, broiled and buttered and seasoned, well, what a bird he is!

There were woodcock, too, in the lowlands, and Harlson found with them such buoyant life as we men find in sudden death of those small, succulent creatures.  To stop a woodcock on the wing as it pitches over the willows is no simple thing, and he who does it handily is, in one respect, greater than he who ruleth a kingdom.  And, at the table—­but why talk of the woodcock?  There are other game birds for the eating, good in their various degrees, but the woodcock is not classed with them.  In him is the flavoring drawn by his long bill from the very heart of the earth, the very aroma of nature, and all richness.  They ate peacocks’ brains in Caesar’s time.  Later, they found there was something greater in the ortolan, and in some of the similar smaller things which fly.  But as the ages passed, and palates became cultivated by heredity, and what made all flavors became known, the woodcock rose and was given the rank of his great heritage—­the most perfect bird for him who knows of eating; the bird which is to others what the long-treasured product of some Rhine hillside or Italian vineyard is to the vintage of the day, what old Roquefort or Stilton is to curd, what the sweet, dense, musky perfume of the hyacinth is to the shallow scent of rhododendron.  Even the Titian-haired setter recognized the imperial nature of the woodcock, and was all emotion about the willow-clumps.

Of course, from one point of view it is absurd, to thus depart from a simple story upon the killing or the cooking or the flavor of a bird.  But I am telling of Grant Harlson and the woman he later found, and it seems to me that even such matters as these, the sport he had, and the facts and fancies he acquired, are part of the story, and have something to do with defining and making clear the forming knowingness, and character, and habits and inclinations of the man.  Between him who knows old Tokay and woodcock, and the other man, there is every distinction.  Harlson had learned his woodcock, but the Tokay was yet to come.