Upon one occasion an elderly gentleman living close to the church contracted some malady which necessitated, the doctor said, the observance of the strictest quiet, even on Sundays. A message was sent to the chief of the bellringers to this effect, the invalid’s wife expressing the hope that for a Sunday or two the bells might be permitted to remain silent. Of course her very reasonable wish was granted. The chief of the ringers thoughtfully called every Sunday morning to inquire after the sufferer’s condition, and for three weeks he learned that it was unchanged, and the bells consequently remained silent. On the fourth Sunday, he was told that the man had died during the night. He immediately hastened off to the other seven bellringers, worse than the first, and telling them that their prohibition was removed, they climbed the belfry and rang forth the most joyous peal that had ever annoyed the neighbourhood.
“Ah,” said the lady with whom I lodged, “there are the joy bells once more. Poor Mr. Jenkins must be dead at last.”
CHAPTER XI.—ON SOME FORMS OF SPORT.
An invitation to shoot rooks—The sub-editors gun—A quotation from “The Rivals”—The rook in repose—How the gun came to be smashed—Recollections of the Spanish Main—A greatly overrated sport—The story of Jack Burnaby’s dogs—A fastidious man—His keeper’s remonstrance—The Australian visitor—-A kind offer—Over-willing dogs—The story of a muzzle-loader—How Mr. Egan came to be alive—Why Patsy Muldoon smiled—The moral—Degrees of dampness—Below the surface—The chameleon blackberry—A superlative degree of thirst.
A FRIEND of mine once came to my office to invite me to an afternoon’s rook-shooting. I was not in my room and he found me in the sub-editor’s. I inquired about the trains to the place where the slaughter was to be done, and finding that they were satisfactory, agreed to join him on the following afternoon.
Then he turned to the sub-editor—a pleasant young fellow who had ideas of going to the bar—and asked him if he would care to come also. At first the sub-editor said he did not think he would be able to come, though he would like very much to do so. A little persuasion was sufficient to make him agree to be one of our party. He had not a gun of his own, he said, but a friend had frequently offered to lend him one, so that there would be no difficulty so far as that matter was concerned.
The next day I managed, as usual, just to catch the train as it began to move-away from the platform. My colleague on the newspaper had the door of the compartment open for me, and I could see the leather of his gun-case under the seat. I put my rook rifle—it was not in a case—in the network, and we had a delightful run through the autumn landscape to the station—it seemed miles from any village—where my friend was awaiting us in his dogcart, driving tandem. The drive of three miles to the rook-wood was exhilarating, and as we skirted some lines of old gnarled oaks, I perceived in a moment that we could easily fill a railway truck with birds, they were so plentiful. I made a remark to this effect to my friend, who was driving, and he said that when we arrived at the shooting ground and gave the birds the chance to which they were entitled we mightn’t get more than a couple of hundred all told.
The shooting ground was under a straggling tree about fifty yards from the ruin of an old castle, said to have been built by the Knights Templar. Here we dismounted from the dogcart, sending it a mile or two farther along the road in charge of the man, and got ready our rifles.