A Tarn—a Tarn! with but a small circle of unbroken water in the centre, and all the rest of its shallowness bristling, in every bay, with reeds and rushes, and surrounded, all about the mossy flat, with marshes and quagmires! What a breeding-place—"procreant cradle" for water-fowl! Now comes thy turn, O'Bronte—for famous is thy name, almost as thy sire's, among the flappers. Crawl down to leeward, Hamish, that you may pepper them—should they take to flight overhead to the loch. Surefoot, taste that greensward, and you will find it sweet and succulent. Dogs, heel—heel!—and now let us steal, on our Crutch, behind that knoll, and open a sudden fire on the swimmers, who seem to think themselves out of shot at the edge of that line of water-lilies; but some of them will soon find themselves mistaken, whirling round on their backs, and vainly endeavouring to dive after their friends that disappear beneath the agitated surface shot-swept into spray. Long Gun! who oft to the forefinger of Colonel Hawker has swept the night-harbour of Poole all alive with widgeons, be true to the trust now reposed in thee by Kit North! And though these be neither geese, nor swans, nor hoopers, yet send thy leaden shower among them feeding in their play, till all the air be afloat with specks, as if at the shaking of a feather-bed that had burst the ticking, and the tarn covered with sprawling mawsies and mallards, in death-throes among the ducklings! There it lies on its rest—like a telescope. No eye has discovered the invention—keen as those wild eyes are of the plouterers on the shallows. Lightning and thunder! to which all the echoes roar. But we meanwhile are on our back; for of all the recoils that ever shook a shoulder, that one was the severest—but 'twill probably cure our rheumatism and——Well done—nobly, gloriously done, O'Bronte! Heaven and earth, how otter-like he swims! Ha, Hamish! you have cut off the retreat of that airy voyager—you have given it him in his stern, Hamish—and are reloading for the flappers. One at a time in your mouth, O'Bronte! Put about with that tail for a rudder—and make for the shore. What a stately creature! as he comes issuing from the shallows, and bearing the old mallard breast-high, walks all dripping along the greensward, and then shakes from his curled ebony the flashing spray-mist. He gives us one look as we crown the knoll, and then in again with a spang and a plunge far into the tarn, caring no more for the reeds than for so many windle-straes, and, fast as a sea-serpent, is among the heart of the killed and wounded. In unerring instinct he always seizes the dead—and now a devil's dozen lie along the shore. Come hither, O'Bronte, and caress thy old master. Ay—that showed a fine feeling—did that long shake that bedrizzled the sunshine. Put thy paws over our shoulders, and round our neck, true son of thy sire—oh! that he were but alive, to see and share thy achievements: but indeed, two such dogs, living together in their prime at one era, would have been too great glory for this sublunary canine world. Therefore Sirius looked on thy sire with an evil eye, and in jealousy—
"Tantæne animis cælestibus iræ!"
growled upon some sinner to poison the Dog of all Dogs, who leapt up almost to the ceiling of the room where he slept—our own bedroom—under the agony of that accursed arsenic, gave one horrid howl, and expired. Methinka we know his murderer—his eye falls when it meets ours on the Street of Princes; and let him scowl there but seldom—for though 'tis but suspicion, this fist, O'Bronte, doubles at the sight of the miscreant—and some day, impelled by wrath and disgust, it will smash his nose flat with the other features, till his face is a pancake. Yea! as sure as Themis holds her balance in the skies, shall the poisoner be punished out of all recognition by his parents, and be disowned by the Irish Cockney father that begot him, and the Scotch Cockney mother that bore him, as he carries home a tripe-like countenance enough to make his paramour the scullion miscarry, as she opens the door to him on the fifth flat of a common stair. But we are getting personal, O'Bronte, a vice abhorrent from our nature.
There goes our Crutch, Hamish, whirling aloft in the sky like a rainbow flight, even like the ten-pound hammer from the fling of George Scougal at the St Ronans games. Our gout is gone—so is our asthma—eke our rheumatism—and, like an eagle, we have renewed our youth. There is hop, step, and jump, for you, Hamish—we should not fear, young and agile as you are, buck, to give you a yard. But now for the flappers. Pointers all, stir your stumps and into the water. This is rich. Why, the reeds are as full of flappers as of frogs. If they can fly, the fools don't know it. Why, there is a whole musquito-fleet of yellow boys, not a month old. What a prolific old lady must she have been, to have kept on breeding till July. There she sits, cowering, just on the edge of the reeds, uncertain whether to dive or fly. By the creak and cry of the cradle of thy first-born, Hamish, spare the plumage on her yearning and quaking breast. The little yellow images have all melted away, and are now, in holy cunning of instinct, deep down beneath the waters, shifting for themselves among the very mud at the bottom of the reeds. By-and-by they will be floating with but the points of their bills above the surface, invisible among the air-bells. The parent duck has also disappeared; the drake you disposed of, Hamish, as the coward was lifting up his lumbering body, with fat doup and long neck in the air, to seek safer skies. We male creatures—drakes, ganders, and men alike—what are we, when affection pleads, in comparison with females! In our passions, we are brave, but these satiated, we turn upon our heel and disappear from danger, like dastards. But doves, and ducks, and women, are fearless in affection to the very death. Therefore have we all our days, sleeping or waking, loved the sex, virgin and matron; nor would we hurt a hair of their heads, grey or golden, for all else that shines beneath the sun.
Not the best practice this in the world, certainly, for pointers—and it may teach them bad habits on the hill; but, in some situations, all dogs and all men are alike, and cross them as you will, not a breed but shows a taint of original sin, when under a temptation sufficiently strong to bring it out. Ponto, Piro, and Basta, are now, according to their abilities, all as bad as O'Bronte—and never, to be sure, was there such a worrying in this wicked world. But now we shall cease our fire, and leave the few flappers that are left alive to their own meditations. Our conduct for the last hour must have seemed to them no less unaccountable than alarming, and something to quack over during the rest of the season. Well, we do not remember ever to have seen a prettier pile of ducks and ducklings. Hamish, take census. What do you say—two score? That beats cockfighting. Here's a hank of twine, Hamish, tie them altogether by the legs, and hang them, in two divisions of equal weights, over the crupper of Surefoot.
THE MOORS.
FLIGHT THIRD—STILL LIFE.
We have been sufficiently slaughterous for a man of our fine sensibilities and moderate desires, Hamish; and as, somehow or other, the scent seems to be beginning not to lie well—yet the air cannot be said to be close and sultry either—we shall let Brown Bess cool herself in both barrels—relinquish, for an hour or so, our seat on Shelty, and, by way of a change, pad the hoof up that smooth ascent, strangely left stoneless—an avenue positively looking as if it were artificial, as it stretches away, with its beautiful green undulations, among the blocks; for though no view-hunter, we are, Hamish, what in fine language is called a devout worshipper of Nature, an enthusiast in the sublime; and if Nature do not show us something worth gazing at when we reach yonder altitudes, she must be a grey deceiver, and we shall never again kneel at her footstool, or sing a hymn in her praise.