“Come on!” shouted Gilmore. “Found anything?”
Macey shook his head, and hurried once more onward to keep the line, to hear soon afterwards scape, scape, uttered shrilly by a snipe which darted off in zigzag flight.
“Oh, how poor old Vane would have liked to be here on such a morning!” thought Macey, and a peculiar moisture, which he hastily dashed away, gathered in his eyes and excused as follows:—
“Catching cold,” he said, quickly. “No wonder with one’s feet and legs so wet, why, I’m soaking right up to the waist. Hallo! what bird’s that?”
For a big-headed, thick-beaked bird flew out of a furze bush, showing a good deal of white in its wings.
“Chaffinch, I s’pose. No; can’t be. Too big. Oh, I do wish poor old Vane was here: he knows everything of that kind. Where can he be? Where can he be?”
It was hot work that toiling through the bushes, but no one murmured or showed signs of slackening as he struggled along. There were halts innumerable, and the doctor could be seen hurrying here and hurrying there along the straggling line till at last a longer pause than usual was made at some pool, and heads were turned toward those who seemed to be making a more careful examination than usual; while, to relieve the tedium of the halt, Distin suddenly went splashing through the shallow stream on to the pebbly margin on the other side.
“Shan’t you get very wet?” shouted Gilmore.
“Can’t get wetter than I am,” was shouted back then. “I say it’s ten times better walking here. Look out! Moor-hens!”
“And wild ducks,” cried Gilmore, as a pair of pointed-winged mallards flew up with a wonderfully graceful flight.