ack as he ran,
bolted for dear life, crouching low--even then he would not rise--for
the hedge. He got there alive, if not quite whole; while a fourth
nameless object cut twigs off above him. Then he kept on running,
always hugging the hedges, till he was two fields away. He was upset
and overstrained, for Fate had given him plenty of deaths to circumvent
as it was, in the ordinary course of business, and this addition was a
bit too much.

There are other forms of shooting pheasants than the orthodox one,
which begins with smoking a cigarette on a comfortable shooting-seat,
and ends with a wild and furious fusillade, using three guns as fast as
you can. So thought the farmer's son, who took the chance to test his
new American .22-bore repeating-rifle, now that all the keepers were
well out of the way. And he had come mighty close to bagging the old
cock-bird, too. "As near as made no odds," he said, which was true,
but only the old bird himself knew quite the closeness of the call.

In the far field the bronze king of the woods found peace for a bit.
The stunning reports in the covert not far away, and the thought that
his companions of yesterday, his lady-loves of last spring, were even
then being butchered by the hundred, made no difference to his
digestion. He fed on with that imperturbability that must have come to
him straight through his ancestors from the East--Kismet! It was
sufficient.

He ought, of course, to have been in the covert. He was, however,
here--knowingly here, cunningly here, safely--No, by Jove! Not that,
by any means.

A head, clean and neat and sharp, had poked out of the long, pale grass
at the edge of the hedge-ditch, and stared at him. He couldn't very
well miss seeing it because of the unforgettable brightness of its
beady eyes, and the absolutely spotless purity of its white
shirt-front. Besides, he knew the owner--and its reputation.

He was helping the farmer to clear an oat-stubble of charlock-seeds at
the moment, and bending down. That is to say, he was doing inestimable
good, for which he got no credit. The next moment, and the next, and
for many more, he was still bending down. In fact, from the instant he
got sight of that head, it was as if a Hand had come down and turned
him by magic into a big model of a bird cast in bronze. All life in
him appeared to have dried up and fled. He looked as if you could have
picked him up and put him upon a bracket in your dra