the barking of the
shepherd's dog.

Next morning the anglers were somewhat put out at first at the
necessity of fulfilling an engagement with the keeper, being reminded
of the promise by the appearance of a shock-headed youth in the cottage
garden, staggering under two sacks. M. was better versed in these
things than the other, and able to inform him that this meant
rabbiting; here were the nets and the ferrets, and he had undertaken to
stand by with the single-barrel and see fair play. Ferreting is a
business generally transacted without hustle, and the keeper was a
noted slowcoach. With this knowledge, and the presence under his eye
of a basket containing ground-bait kneaded in the woodhouse while the
breakfast rashers were frying, S. opined that he might snatch an hour
or so of honest reaching in the backwater while the rabbit people were
getting ready.

The roach master eventually came to the rendezvous, indeed, with a
dozen and five of those beautifully graded roach which are between
three-quarters and half pound, and which, when they are "on the feed,"
run marvellously even in size and quality. M. did not now concern
himself about the roach. He was no longer a Waltonian; his mind had
taken the tone of the keeper's. Yesterday his soul was of the fish,
fishy; to-day it was full of muzzle-loaders, nets, and ferrets. But
he, too, had his reward, and S. noticed that as they plodded athwart a
fallow he looked out keenly and knowingly for feathered or four-footed
game as if he were Colonel Hawker in person, and not the patient
paternosterer with downcast eye. After S. had witnessed his bright eye
and upstanding boldness when he brought the single-barrel to shoulder
and dropped a gloriously burnished woodpigeon at long shot, he
conceived an enhanced respect for him evermore, and was endued with a
spirit of toleration to watch the coming operations, in which he took
no part.

Nets were pegged down; there was much talk of bolt holes between the
keeper and the rustic shockhead working on different sides of the bank,
and M. and the dog Spider had vision and thought for nothing but the
open holes they guarded. It transpired that the keeper wanted rabbits
for commerce. The couples that speedily met fate in the nets were
insufficient. He required fifteen couple. M. rolled over a white scut
with obvious neatness and dispatch, and in shifting over to another
hedgerow he shot a jay and gloried in its splendour. The