st. "We
can't have the dogs, though, as the keepers and beaters are going a
different way; and each man will have to carry what he shoots. In that
case we'll leave rabbits alone. Gerald, you had better get to the
extreme left of the line. That will limit the risk to one man!"

"I'll carry home your bag if you'll carry mine, Gerald," cried Standish
facetiously, as my brother-in-law, a trifle offended at the Admiral's
last pleasantry, proceeded with much dignity to his allotted place.

Gerald was almost out of earshot, but he waved a defiant acquiescence.

We tramped round the shoulder of the hill, keeping our distance as well
as we could on the steep slope, and occasionally putting up something to
shoot at. My bag this time made no great demands on my powers of
porterage, consisting as it did of a solitary snipe. However, when
nearly an hour later we gathered at the foot of the next line of
butts--the last before lunch--most of us were carrying something.
Standish gleefully displayed two hares and a brace of grouse.

"There is something for Master Gerald to carry back to the
luncheon-cart," he said. "I wonder what he has got for me. Where is he?"

"I don't quite know," said Dermott, who had been Gerald's nearest
neighbour. "He was so offended by our gibes about the danger of his
society that he walked rather wide of me. He kept down at the very foot
of the hill most of the time, almost out of sight."

"I hope he hasn't shot himself," said the Admiral rather anxiously.

"Never fear!" said I. "That will not be his end. Here he is."

Sure enough, Gerald appeared at this moment. He was empty-handed.

Simple and primitive jests greeted him.

"Hallo, old man, what have you shot--eh? Where is your little lot?"

Gerald smiled seraphically.

"You'll find it down there," he said--"in that patch of bracken,
Standish. I left it for you to bring up. Rather heavy for me."

"What on earth have you shot?" we cried involuntarily.

"A sheep," said Gerald calmly.

Great heavens!

We rushed down the hill as one man--and came up again looking not a
little hot and uncommonly foolish. The sheep was there, it is true,
stiff and stark in the bracken; but more senses than one apprised us of
the fact that it had been dead for considerably more than five minutes.
Gerald had stumbled on to the corpse, and had turned his discovery, we
afterwards admitted, to remarkably good advantage. It was "Mr Standish's
turn," as Miss Buncle, in