As they and the unfaded page of memory record the years, it was but a little while ago that his heart was almost bursting with pride of that first triumph. Would that he might once more feel that delicious pang of joy.
Hark! There is the quit! quit! of a grouse, and there another and another, and the patter and rustle of their retreating footsteps, presently launching into sudden flight, vaguely seen in swift bolts of gray, hurtling among gray tree trunks and variegated foliage. True to the old instinct his gun leaps to his shoulder, and he fires again and again at the swift target. But the quick eye no longer guides the aim, the timely finger no longer pulls the trigger, and the useless pellets waste themselves on the leaves and twigs.
The woods are full of grouse, as if all the birds of the region had congregated here to mock his failing sight and skill. On every side they burst away from him like rockets, and his quick but futile charges in rapid succession are poured in their direction, yet not a bird falls, nor even a feather wavers down through the still October air. His dim eyes refuse to mark down the birds that alight nearest; he can only vaguely follow their flight by the whirring rush of wings and the click of intercepting branches.
He is not ashamed of his loss of skill, only grieved to know that his shooting days are over, yet he is glad there is no one near to see his failure. He makes renunciation of all title to the name of a crack shot, too well knowing that this is no brief lapse of skill, but the final, inevitable falling off of the quick eye and sure hand. Slowly and sadly he makes his way to where the shaded path merges into the sunny clearing. There, from the cover of the last bush, a laggard bird springs as if thrown from a catapult, describing in his flight an arc of a great circle, and clearly defined against the steel-blue sky.
Again the gun springs instinctively to the shoulder, the instantaneous aim is taken well ahead on the line of flight, the trigger pressed in the nick of time, the charge explodes, and out of a cloud of feathers drifting and whirling in the eddies of his own wing-beats, the noble bird sweeps downward in the continuation of the course that ends with a dull thud on the pasture sward.
The old sportsman lifts his clean-killed bird without a thrill of exultation—he is only devoutly thankful for the happy circumstance which made successful the last shot he will ever fire, and that not as a miss he may remember it. Henceforth untouched by him his gun shall hang upon the wall, its last use linked with the pleasant memory of his last shot.
XL
NOVEMBER DAYS
In a midsummer sleep one dreams of winter, its cold, its silence and desolation all surrounding him; then awakes, glad to find himself in the reality of the light and warmth of summer.