ph when one
outwitted them! One of my clearest recollections is discovering a
place to which they were flighting at night by the water's edge; how,
having no dog, I swam out for bird after bird as they fell to my
gun--shooting some before I had even time to put on my shirt again;
and my consequent blue-black shoulder, which had to be carefully
hidden next day. There were wild ducks, too, to be surprised in the
pools of the big salt marshes.

From daylight to dark I would wander, quite alone, over endless miles,
entirely satisfied to come back with a single bird, and not in the
least disheartened if I got none. All sense of time used to be lost,
and often enough the sandwich and biscuit for lunch forgotten, so that
I would be forced occasionally to resort to a solitary public house
near a colliery on our side of the water, for "tea-biscuits," all that
they offered, except endless beer for the miners. I can even remember,
when very hard driven, crossing to the Welsh side for bread and
cheese.

These expeditions were made barefoot as long as the cold was not too
great. A diary that I assayed to keep in my eighth year reminds me
that on my birthday, five miles from home in the marshes, I fell head
over heels into a deep hole, while wading out, gun in hand, after some
oyster-catchers which I had shot. The snow was still deep on the
countryside, and the long trot home has never been quite forgotten. My
grief, however, was all for the gun. There was always the joy of
venture in those dear old Sands. The channels cut in them by the
flowing tides ran deep, and often intersected. Moreover, they changed
with the varying storms. The rapidly rising tide, which sent a bore up
the main channel as far as Chester, twelve miles above us, filled
first of all these treacherous waterways, quite silently, and often
unobserved. To us, taught to be as much at home in the water as on the
land, they only added spice to our wanderings. They were nowhere very
wide, so by keeping one's head, and being able to swim, only our
clothes suffered by it, and they, being built for that purpose, did
not complain.

One day, however, I remember great excitement. The tide had risen
rapidly in the channel along the parade front, and the shrimp
fishermen, who used push-nets in the channels at low tide, had
returned without noticing that one of their number was missing. Word
got about just too late, and already there was half a mile of water,
beyond which, t