The old cock-pheasant slid across the “ride” after a bit, low as a crouching rat.  He had no business there this day.  His mind was still alert with suspicion.  Moreover, his father had been a cunning old cock who had managed, by ways that were dark, to keep out of the game-bag for years, too.  The taint, as Gaiters would have called it, had been passed on to him.

He made for the open edge of the covert, and he was mighty careful about doing that even.  He felt that air and plenty of horizon were necessary to his well-being, after the disturbing vision of Gaiters and Co., so unnaturally busy, hurrying through the dawn.

Now, it is quite remarkable how much you can see from the edge of a pheasant-covert without being seen yourself.  Keepers know that, but do not give the fact away.  The ground sloped away in two open grass fields, a hedge dividing them, and it was within about the longitude and the latitude of where that hedge met the covert that our old friend maneuvered.

The climate about there seemed to suit him admirably.  True, good food was not strewn in plenty just where he could most easily see it.  He had to look for his acorns or his beechmast by the good old domestic-fowl plan of scratching among the leaves; roots also he was forced to scratch for; and the noisy mistle-thrushes with the tempers of Eblis had to be driven off the berries he would look after in the ditch.

Also, there was a stoat.  That stoat, however, tackled him just once.  In the process it discovered (a) that he wore spurs not meant to be ornaments, and (b) that no one could teach him much about using those same spurs.  The stoat, plus a new carmine decoration for gallantry, remembered an urgent appointment down a rat-hole, and kept it.  Perhaps it was a young stoat, and had not learnt that there are at least four degrees of cock-pheasant, namely, young and brainless, adult and brave, old and brave and cunning, and old and decrepit; but the last stage is a rare bird.  There is nothing of any use to the stoat in the second and third degrees of cock-pheasant—­no health to the stoat, you understand.

The dawning of the morning had passed by now in gold and crimson and purple splendor; the mist-curtain had been drawn back by the fingers of the wind, the utter darkness upon everything at ground-level had begun to give way before the sun, and to leeward of most trees and bushes there was a balmy luxuriance of golden light that held one lingering.

Gnats were dancing under the low-hung boughs in still corners, as they will dance on the coldest day; song-thrushes were beginning to take life for one more day, and tack hither and yon, as if they were busy pegging the field down with an invisible “cats’ cradle”; and the black rooks, shining like burnished steel shields, flashed and flashed again as they began to gather beneath the trees, where the ground thawed most and first.  Though they alone seemed to have discovered it, the pigeons very quickly found that the rooks had hit something good, and you can bet one jay, at any rate, must be there, to make profit out of somebody.