suspiciously—resting the heavy barrels on the tree, and made nervous by the whispered instructions from the keeper kneeling on the grass out of sight behind, “Aim at his shoulder, lad, if he be sitting sidelong; if a’ be got his back to ’ee aim at his poll.” From this it was but a short step to be trusted with the single-barrel, and finally with the double; ultimately having one of his own and walking his own distinct rounds.

He is now a keen shot, even better than his father; for it is often observed that at a certain age young beginners in most manual arts reach an excellence which in later years fails them. Perhaps the muscles are more elastic, and respond instantaneously to the eye. This mere boy at snap-shooting in the “rough” will beat crack sportsmen hollow. At the trap with pigeons he would probably fail; but in a narrow lane where the rabbits, driven out by the ferrets, just pop across barely a yard of open ground, where even a good shot may miss repeatedly, he is “death” itself to the “bunnies.” So, too, with a wood-hare—i.e. those hares that always lie in the woods as others do in the open fields and on the uplands. They are difficult to kill. They slip quietly out from the form in the rough grass under the ashstole, and all you have for guidance is the rustling and, perhaps, the tips of the ears, the body hidden by the tangled dead ferns and “rowetty” stuff. When you try to aim the barrel knocks against the ash-poles, which are inconveniently near together, or the branches get in the way, and the hare dodges round a tree, and your cartridge simply barks a bough and cuts a tall dead thistle in twain. But the keeper’s lad, who had waited for your fire, instantly follows, as it seems hardly lifting his gun to his shoulder, and the hare is stopped by the shot.

Rabbit-shooting, also, in an ash wood like this is trying to the temper; they double and dodge, and if you wait, thinking that the brown rascals must presently cross the partially open space yonder, lo! just at the very edge up go their white tails and they dive into the bowels of the earth, having made for hidden burrows. There is, of course, after all, nothing but a knack in these things. Still it is something to have acquired the knack. The lad, if you ask him, will proudly show off several gun tricks, as shooting left-handed, placing the butt at the left instead of the right shoulder and pulling the trigger with the left finger. He will knock over a running rabbit like this; and at short distances can shoot with tolerable certainty from under the arm without coming to the “present,” or even holding the gun out like a pistol with one hand.

By slow degrees he has obtained an intimate acquaintance with every field on the place, and no little knowledge of natural history. He will decide at once, as if by a kind of instinct, where any particular bird or animal will be found at that hour.

He is more bitter than his father against poachers, and would like to see harder measures dealt out to them; but his chief use is in watching or checking the assistants, who act as beaters, ferreters, or keep up the banks and fences about the preserves, etc. Without a doubt these men are very untrustworthy, and practise many tricks. For instance, when they are set to ferret a bank, what is to prevent them, if the coast is clear, from hiding half a dozen dead rabbits in a burrow? digging has frequently to be resorted to, and thus they can easily cast earth over and conceal the entrance to a hole. Many a wounded hare and pheasant that falls into the hands of the beaters never makes it appearance at the table of the sportsman; and doubtless they help themselves to the game captured in many a poacher’s wire before giving notice of the discovery to the head man.

Some of these assistants wear waistcoats of calfskin with the hair on it. The hair is outside, and the roan-and-white colour has a curious appearance: the material is said to be very warm and durable. Such waistcoats were common years ago; but of late the looms and spindles of the manufacturing districts have reduced the most outlying of the provinces to a nearly dead uniformity of shoddy.

One pair of eyes cannot be everywhere at once; consequently the keeper, as his son grew up, found him a great help in this way: while he goes one road the lad goes the other, and the undermen never feel certain that some one is not about. Perhaps partly for this reason the lad is not a favourite in the village, and few if any of the other boys make friends with him. He is too loyal to permit of their playing trespass—he looks down on them as a little lower in the scale. Do they ever speak, even in the humblest way, to the proprietor of the place? In their turn they ostracise him after their fashion; so he becomes a silent, solitary youth, self-reliant, and old for his years.

He is a daring climber: as after the hawk’s nest, generally made in the highest elms or pines—if that species of tree is to be found—taking the young birds to some farmhouse where the children delight in living creatures. Some who are not children, or are children of “a larger growth,” like to have a tame hawk in the garden, clipping the wings so that it shall not get away. Hawks have most amusing tricks, and in time become comparatively tame, at least to the person who feeds them. The beauty of the hawk’s eye can hardly be surpassed: full, liquid, and piercing. In this way the keeper’s boy often gets a stray shilling; also for young owls, which are still kept in some country houses, in the sheds or barns, to destroy the mice. When the corn was threshed with the flail, and was consequently exposed to the ravages of these creatures (if undisturbed they multiply in such numbers as would scarcely be credited) owls were almost domestic birds, being domiciled in every barn. Now they are more objects of curiosity, though still useful when large teams of horses are kept and require grain.

The keeper’s boy sells, too, young squirrels from time to time, and the eggs of the rarer birds. In short, he has imbibed all the ways of the woods, and is an adept at everything, from “harling” a rabbit upwards. By-the-bye, what is the etymology of “harling,” which seems to have the sense of entangling? It is done by passing the blade of the knife between the bone of the thigh and the great sinew—where there is nothing but skin—and then thrusting the other foot through the hole thus made. The rabbit or hare can then be conveniently carried by the loop thus formed, or slung on a stick or the gun-barrel across the shoulder. Of course the “harling” is not done till the animal is dead.

The book-learning of the keeper’s boy is rather limited, for he was taught by the parish clerk and schoolmaster before the Education Acts were formulated. Still, he can read, and pores over the weekly paper of rural sports, etc, taken for the guests at the great house and when out of date sent down to the keeper’s cottage. In fact, he shows a little too much interest in the turf columns to be quite satisfactory to his father, who is somewhat anxious about his acquaintance with the jockeys from the training-stables on the downs hard by—an acquaintance he discourages as tending to no good. Like his father, he is never seen abroad without a pair of leathern gaiters, and, if not a gun, a stout gnarled ground-ash stick in his hand.

The gamekeeper’s calling naturally tends to perpetuate itself and become hereditary in his family. The life is full of attraction to boys—the gun alone is hardly to be resisted; and, in addition, there are the animals and birds with which the office is associated, and the comparative freedom from restraint. Therefore one at least of his lads is sure to follow in his father’s steps, and after a youth and early manhood spent out of doors in the woods it is next to