dy to leap out of the barrel again.

Then there was the pan to open and prove full of powder, and all ready
for the first great wild bird he should see, or perhaps a hare or a fox,
as soon as he should land.

For it was thought no sin to shoot the foxes there in that wild corner
of England, where hounds had never been laid on, and the only chance of
hunting would have been in boats. Foxes lived and bred there year after
year, and died without ever hearing the music of the huntsman's horn.

Dick laid the gun down with a sigh, and took up the pole, which he used
for nearly an hour before, with the fir island well to his left, he ran
the punt into a narrow cove among the reeds which spread before him,
and, taking the piece, stepped out upon what was a new land.

It must have been with something of the feelings of the old navigators
who touched at some far western isle, that Dick Winthorpe landed from
his boat, and secured it by knotting together some long rushes and tying
the punt rope to them. For here he was in a place where the foot of man
could have rarely if ever trod, and, revelling in his freedom and the
beauty of the scene around, he shouldered the piece.

He would have acted more wisely if he had filled his pockets with
provender from the basket; but he wanted those pockets for the powder
and shot, and without intending to go very far from the punt he started,
meaning to go in a straight line for some trees he could see at a great
distance off, hoping to find something in the shape of game before he
had gone far.

It is very easy to make a straight line on a map, but a difficult feat
to go direct from one spot to another in a bog.

Dick did not find it out, for he knew it of old, and so troubled himself
very little as he plodded on under the hot afternoon sun, now on firm
ground, now making some wide deviation so as to avoid a pool of black
water. Then there were treacherous morass-like pieces of dark mire
thinly covered with a scum-like growth, here green, there bleached in
the June sunshine.

It was always hot walking, and made the worse by the way in which, in
spite of all his care, his feet sank in the soft soil. At times he
plashed along, having to leap from place to place, and then when the way
seemed so bad that he felt that he must return, it suddenly became
better and lured him on.

He panted and perspired, and struggled on, with the gun always ready;
but saving a moor-hen or two upon one or