h their
slender twigs in their own inimitable fashion, peculiarly trying to my
temper. I can never go through birches long without growing captious.

"Jonathan," I call, as I catch a glimpse of his hunting-coat through an
opening, "I thought the birds were in the birches this morning. They
don't seem really abundant."

Jonathan, unruffled, suggests that I go along on the edge of the woods
while he beats out the middle with the dog, which magnanimous offer
shames me into silent if not cheerful acquiescence. Suddenly--
_whr-r-r_--something bursts away in the brush ahead of us. "Mark!" we
both call, and, "Did you get his line?" My critical spirit is stilled,
and I am suddenly fired with the instinct to follow, follow! It is
indeed a primitive instinct, this of the chase. No matter how tired one
is, the impulse of pursuit is there. At the close of a long day's hunt,
after fifteen miles or so of hard tramping,--equal to twice that of easy
walking,--when my feet are heavy and my head dull, I have never seen a
partridge fly without feeling ready, eager, to follow anywhere.

After we move the first bird, it is follow my leader! And a wild leader
he is. Flushed in the birches, he makes straight for the swamp. The
swamp it is, then, and down we go after him, and in we go--ugh! how
shivery the first plunge is--straight to the puddly heart of it,
carefully keeping our direction. We go fast at first, then, when we have
nearly covered the distance a partridge usually flies, we begin to slow
down, holding back the too eager dog, listening for the snap of a twig
or the sound of wings, gripping our guns tighter at every blue jay or
robin that flicks across our path. No bird yet; we must have passed him;
perhaps we went too far to the left. But no--_whr-r-r_! _Where_ is he?
There! Out of the top of a tall swamp maple, off he goes, sailing over
the swamp to the ridge beyond. No wonder the dog was at sea. Well--we
know his line, we are off again after him in spite of the swamp
between, with its mud and its rotten tree trunks and its grapevines and
its cat briers.

Up on the ridge at last, we hunt close, find him, get a shot, probably
miss, and away we go again. Some hunters, used to a country where game
is plenty, will not follow a bird if they miss him on the first rise.
They prefer to keep on their predetermined course and find another. But
for me there is little pleasure in that kind of sport. What I enjoy most
is not shooting, but