s impossible a thing as we know, to borrow a dog about the
time the sun has reached his meridian, on the First Day of the
Partridges. Ponto by this time has sneaked, unseen by human eye, into
his kennel, and coiled himself up into the arms of "tired Nature's sweet
restorer, balmy sleep." A farmer makes offer of a collie, who, from
numbering among his paternal ancestors a Spanish pointer, is quite a Don
in his way among the cheepers, and has been known in a turnip-field to
stand in an attitude very similar to that of setting. Luath has no
objection to a frolic over the fields, and plays the part of Ponto to
perfection. At last he catches sight of a covey basking, and, leaping in
upon them open-mouthed, despatches them right and left, even like the
famous dog Billy killing rats in the pit at Westminster. The birds are
bagged with a gentle remonstrance, and Luath's exploit rewarded with a
whang of cheese. Elated by the pressure on his shoulder, the young
gentleman laughs at the idea of pointing; and fires away, like winking,
at every uprise of birds, near or remote; works a miracle by bringing
down three at a time, that chanced, unknown to him, to be crossing, and,
wearied with such slaughter, lends his gun to the attendant farmer, who
can mark down to an inch, and walks up to the dropped pout as if he
could kick her up with his foot; and thus the bag in a few hours is half
full of feathers; while, to close with eclat the sport of the day, the
cunning elder takes him to a bramble bush, in a wall nook, at the edge
of a wood, and returning the gun into his hands, shows him poor pussy
sitting with open eyes, fast asleep! The pellets are in her brain, and
turning herself over, she crunkles out to her full length, like a piece
of untwisting Indian rubber, and is dead. The posterior pouch of the
jacket, yet unstained by blood, yawns to receive her--and in she goes
plump; paws, ears, body, feet, fud, and all--while Luath, all the way
home to the Mains, keeps snoking at the red drops oozing through; for
well he knows, in summer's heat and winter's cold, the smell of pussy,
whether sitting beneath a tuft of withered grass on the brae, or
burrowed beneath a snow-wreath. A hare, we certainly must say, in spite
of haughtier sportsman's scorn, is, when sitting, a most satisfactory
shot.

But let us trace no further thus, step by step, the Pilgrim's Progress.
Look at him now--a finished sportsman--on the moors--the bright black
boundles