"My setter was immediately declared 'Keeper of the Keys,' and forthwith invested with all the rights of office. Nor was this confidence misplaced. He would never give up his charge to any one but to my uncle or myself; and always seemed fully sensible of the dignity and responsibility of his new position."
Tolfrey gives, in his "Sportsman in France," so beautiful an instance of a setter's untutored intelligence leading him to see the advantage of placing running birds between himself and the gun, that I will relate it.
"On gaining some high ground, the dog drew and stood. She was walked up to, but to my astonishment we found no birds. She was encouraged, and with great difficulty coaxed off her point. She kept drawing on, but with the same ill success.
"I must confess I was for the moment sorely puzzled; but knowing the excellence of the animal, I let her alone. She kept drawing on for nearly a hundred yards—still no birds. At last, of her own accord, and with a degree of instinct amounting almost to the faculty of reason, she broke from her point, and dashing off to the right made a détour, and was presently straight before me, some three hundred yards off, setting the game whatever it might be, as much as to say, 'I'll be —— if you escape me this time.' We walked steadily on; and when within about thirty yards of her, up got a covey of red-legged partridges, and we had the good fortune to kill a brace each.
"It is one of the characteristics of these birds to run for an amazing distance before they take wing; but the sagacity of my faithful dog baffled all their efforts to escape. We fell in with several coveys of these birds during the day, and my dog ever after gave them the double, and kept them between the gun and herself."
