"What sport to day, Sam?"

"Weal, zir, nawat mooch. Win law-ast
three birds."

"Ah, that was bad! How did that happen?"

"Weal, ye zee, we shot t' first reet deead—
deead as a stone, and then it spired oop i' t'
sky; fell plop dooan and theen took to t' wing
agen, flying oop like a good un. Then
anoother we left o' t' black bank, and won's soom
wheere aboot t' road we cum."

"Well, Sam, that's bad luck indeed; you
must try and redeem your character, and not
waste good powder and shot on such
unfortunate chances."

Sam did try very hard for the redemption
of his character, as far as listening and looking
went, but it was the hardest of all trials for
him to give up his gun to a stranger gentleman,
who "spiled spoart," and didn't seem
inclined to give him the opportunity of pocketing
the eight or nine brace of birds which he
contended that his shooting pouch was made
to hold. Nay, he even went so far as to hint
that the stranger gent didn't properly know
how to hold his gun, alleging, as proof of his
remark, that if lie kept it " up o' shoulder, t'
ladies neeadn't be so feard o' bein shot."

There is Sam again, making a Dinornis of
himself; and this time the stranger gent has
taken his advice and fired. A bird drops
wounded, then again soars up faintly—more
faintly—flutters away from the rush of dogs
and men—away under the deep heather,
which at last only is stirred gently by its
weak exhausted efforts. So the bird falls an
unresisting prey into the hands of the sportsman.
Perhaps as it was the first of its tribe
I had seen so captured, I may be excused
for the sadness which crept over me when
the dying bird lay passive in my hand,
its beautifully tinted plumes, which had so
lately borne it joyously among its fellows,
clotted with blood-stains; its bright eyes, only
just now flying straightway to the light,
dimmed; and the life which had been
maintained in so exquisite a palace cast out and
sent—whither? Sam might be glad enough
to bag his eight or nine brace of such fair-
fashioned creatures, and might cry, "Anan!"
over my regret at the death of this one among
the thousands shot, or hundreds left to die of
their wounds, among the heather. Did the
young sportsman, who stood on a much
higher grade of civilisation than poor Sam,
sympathise with the woman's feeling?
Evidently not; for there he was, with a swell
of self-gratulation over his whole figure. It
was his first bird; and no maiden fresh from
her first ball-room conquest; no matron
brooding over her first-born; no painter
exultant at his first harmony of colouring; no
child-poet fancying himself a future
Shakspeare; could have looked more elate at his
success than our sportsman over his first |
victim. It must be gently, tenderly smoothed j
down; handbd round to the assembled
coterie for approbation; carefully wrapped
in paper—no—on second thoughts, held
carelessly dangling from our sporting wrist.
In fine, when hand, and horse, and steam
had done their duty, and conveyed the
treasure safely home to a far distant house, it
must be stuffed and set on high as a memento
of our prowess and of this glorious day's sport.

Vainly we strove to improve our prentice
hand. No comrade was vouchsafed
to one cock o' the moors. Birds there were
by hundreds, but we were told they were shy.
We followed them slowly, we followed them
quickly, we skirted the hill-side to come
down unawares on their unsuspecting
innocence, but it wouldn't do. Shy! Never
before did shyness assume an air of such
offensive impudence! But those odd fellows,
those solitary misanthropes of grouses, who
prefer picking their tit-bits of crowberry
lonely and forlorn, surely we can surprise oue
or two of them in their hermit haunts. The
two setters Fine-Scent and Sweet-Lips, are
as busy as such important adjutants ought to
be; there they go—hither and thither—their
white bodies now gleaming above, now lost
in the depths of, the rich thick heather. Fine-
Scent sets, and one sportsman advances—
slowly, cautiously. Out flies a hoped-for
victim. Bang-fire-bang! He missed his
mark, and the bird, victorious as an Austerlitz
eagle, floats over our disappointed heads.

    'Twas ever thus. Our fondest hopes, &c. &c.

Our first bird has tenfold duty to perform.
Stoicism, philosophy, wounded pride,
disappointed hope, " recoil from incompleteness
in the face of what is won." All fly for refuge and
compensation under the wing of that poor first
wounded bird.

Accompanied by our host, Mr. Aibee—one
of the most good-natured of our good-natured
independent English landowners, whom
poverty and care never approach, and in whom
perhaps good- nature is on that account of
little merit—we explored every object of
interest on the moor; here, a magnificent
panorama of unrivalled picturesque scenery,
backed by a range of purple hills; there, a
deep ravine overgrown with fern and bell-
heather, worn precipitous by some hill-stream.
Below this, down in the silvery wharf of the
trout-stream, the otter—that villanous
vermin, as Master Isaac Walton calls him—has
often given the chase which proves so much
pleasanter than any other whatever;
there, lurks that dog-fisher of the Latins,
about whom a question hath been debated
by so many "great clerks, and they seem to
differ whether she be a beast or a fish."

Sometimes we jogged along a Roman road
or halted by the remains of an old cromlech.
A cromlech, our guide said it was. A huge
flat stone in the middle of the moor, whereby
speculative men from Bradford city try
their lucks or tempt fortune by belting on
the flight of pigeons. Our host told us