"Then we'll have sport, by Jove!" and, as he spoke, they entered a wide rushy pasture, across which, at some two or three hundred yards, A--- and fat Tom were seen advancing toward them. They had not made three steps before both dogs stood stiff as stones in the short grass, where there was not a particle of covert.
"Why, what the deuce is this, Harry?"
"Devil a know know I," responded he; "but step up to the red dog, Frank --I'll go to the other--they've got game, and no mistake!"
"Skeap--ske-eap!" up sprang a couple of English snipe before Shot's nose, and Harry cut them down, a splendid double shot, before they had flown twenty yards, just as Frank dropped the one which rose to him at the same moment. At the sound of the guns a dozen more rose hard by, and fluttering on in rapid zig-zags, dropped once again within a hundred yards--the meadow was alive with them.
"Did you ever see snipe here before, Tom? asked Harry, as he loaded.
"Never in all my life--but it's full now--load up! load up! for heaven's sake!"
"No hurry, Tom! Tom--steady! the birds are tame and lie like stones. We can get thirty or forty here, I know, if you'll be steady only--but if we go in with these four dogs, we shall lose all. Here comes Tim with the couples, and we'll take up all but two!"
"That's right," said A---; "take up Grouse and Tom's dog, for they won't hunt with yours--and yours are the steadiest, and fetch--that's it, Tim, couple them, and carry them away. What have you killed, Archer?" he added, while his injunctions were complied with.
"One woodcock and a brace of ruffed grouse! and Frank has marked down three-and-twenty quail into that rushy bottom yonder, where we can get every bird of them. We are going to have great sport to-day!"
"I think so. Tom and I each killed a double shot out of that bevy!"