eyond the fifteenth of November; but Tom Draw assures me,
and his asseveration was accidentally corroborated by a man who walked
along with him, that he killed thirty birds last year in Hell-hole,
which both of you fellows know, on the thirteenth of December. There had
been a very severe frost indeed, and the ice on that very morning was
quite thick, and the mud frozen hard enough to bear in places. But the
day was warm, bright, and genial, and, as he says, it came into his head
to see 'if cock was all gone,' and he went to what he knew to be the
latest ground, and found the very heaviest and finest birds he ever
saw!"

"Oh! that of course," said A---, "if he found any! Did you ever hear of
any other bird so late?"

"Yes! later--Mike Sandford, I think, but some Jerseyman or other--killed
a couple the day after Christmas day, on a long southern slope covered
with close dwarf cedars, and watered by some tepid springs, not far from
Pine Brook; and I have been told that the rabbit shooters, who always go
out in a party between Christmas and New Year's day, almost invariably
flush a bird or two there in mid-winter. The same thing is told of a
similar situation on the south-western slope of Staten Island; and I
believe truly in both instances. These, however, must, I think, be
looked upon not as cases of late emigration, but as rare instances of
the bird wintering here to the northward; which I doubt not a few do
annually. I should like much to know if there is any State of the Union
where the cock is perennial. I do not see why he should not be so in
Maryland or Delaware, though I have never heard it stated so to be. The
great heat of the extreme southern summer drives them north, as surely
as our northern winter sends them south; and the great emigrations of
the main flight are northward in February and March, and southward in
November, varying by a few days only according to the variations of the
seasons!"

"Well, I trust they have not emigrated hence yet--ha! ha! ha!" laughed
the Commodore, with his peculiar hearty, deep-toned merriment.

"Not they! not they! I warrant them," said Archer; "but that to-morrow
must bring forth."

"Come, Harry," exclaimed Forester, after a little pause, "spin us a
shooting yarn, to kill the time, till we get to fat Tom's."

"A yarn! well, what shall it be?"

"I don't know; oh! yes! yes! I do. You once told me something about a
wolf-hunt, and then shut up your mouth all at once, and w