the hammers
to half-cock, Chase quietly dismounted from his perch, and Shot's head
and fore-paws appeared above the barrier; but not till Archer's hand
gave the expected signal did the stanch brutes move on.

"Come, Shot, good dog--it is but fair you should have some part of the
fun! Seek dead! seek dead! that's it, sir! Toho! steady! Fetch him, good
lad! Well done!"

In a few minutes' space, four or five more birds came to bag--they had
run, at the near report, up the wall side among the bushes, and the dogs
footed them along it, now one and now another taking the lead
successively, but without any eagerness or raking looking round
constantly, each to observe his comrades' or his master's movements, and
pointing slightly, but not steadily, at every foot, till at the last all
three, in different places, stood almost simultaneously--all three dead
points.

One bird jumped up to Frank, which he knocked over. A double shot fell
to the Commodore, who held the centre of the line, and dropped both
cleverly--the second, a long shot, wing-tipped only. Harry flushed three
and killed two dean, both within thirty paces, and then covered the
third bird with his empty barrels--but, though no shot could follow from
that quarter, he was not to escape scot free, for wheeling short to the
left hand, and flying high, he crossed the Commodore in easy distance,
and afterward gave Forester a chance.

"Try him, Frank," halloaed Archer--and "It's no use!" cried A---, almost
together, just as he raised his gun, and levelled it a good two feet
before the quail.

But it was use, and Harry's practiced eye had judged the distance more
correctly than the short sight of the Commodore permitted--the bird
quailed instantly as the shot struck, but flew on notwithstanding,
slanting down wind, however, towards the ground, and falling on the
hill-side at a full hundred yards.

"We shall not get him," Forester exclaimed; "and I am sorry for it,
since it was a good shot."

"A right good shot," responded Harry, "and we shall get him. He fell
quite dead; I saw him bounce up, like a ball, when he struck the hard
ground. But A---'s second bird is only wing-tipped, and I don't think we
shall get him; for the ground where he fell is very tussockky and full
of grass, and if he creeps in, as they mostly will do, into some hole in
the bog-ground, it is ten to one against the best dog in America!"

And so it came to pass, for they did bag Forester's, and al