IX.
Sometimes towards the end of a fatiguing day, when you feel like an overloaded gun-brig, labouring against a heavy sea of turnips, you may perchance espy a large covey of partridges in the act of settling near a hedge a long way before you. Supposing in such case that your brother sportsman should be a much younger man than yourself, and yet should not have also seen these birds, it is not always quite prudent that you should announce the fact to him immediately. If you wish to have a shot at them, you would, perhaps, do well to say nothing about them till your weary limbs have borne you unhurried a little nearer to the hedge in question. The good old rule of seniores priores is sometimes reversed in a large turnip-field.
X.
In the case of a double shot a gamekeeper never hesitates an instant in deciding whether the bird was killed by his master's gun or by another person's, fired at the same moment.
XI.
When you are making your way through a thick wood with too large a party, it is better that you should be scolded by some of your friends because you trouble them with very frequent notice of your individual locality, than that you should be shot by any of them because you do not.
XII.
On the day of a great battue, if one of the party (not you) should shoot much better than the others, and if this should by chance be talked of after dinner (as such matters sometimes are), do not say much about the very large number of hares and pheasants killed by you—on some other occasion.
XIII.
When you are shooting in a wood, if some hungry fox, in pursuit of his prey, should chance to cross your path, it depends entirely upon the "custom of the country" whether you ought to kill him or not. Bob Short says, in his Rules for Whist, "When in doubt, win the trick."