, he
just marched out beside us, as close as ever he could get, drawing us on
in spirit, and not even attending to the scents, until the lodge gates
were passed.

It was strictly in accordance with the perversity of things, and
something in the nature of calamity that he had not been ours one year,
when there came over me a dreadful but overmastering aversion from
killing those birds and creatures of which he was so fond as soon as they
were dead. And so I never knew him as a sportsman; for during that first
year he was only an unbroken puppy, tied to my waist for fear of
accidents, and carefully pulling me off every shot. They tell me he
developed a lovely nose and perfect mouth, large enough to hold gingerly
the biggest hare. I well believe it, remembering the qualities of his
mother, whose character, however, in stability he far surpassed. But, as
he grew every year more devoted to dead grouse and birds and rabbits, I
liked them more and more alive; it was the only real breach between us,
and we kept it out of sight. Ah! well; it is consoling to reflect that I
should infallibly have ruined his sporting qualities, lacking that
peculiar habit of meaning what one says, so necessary to keep dogs
virtuous. But surely to have had him with me, quivering and alert, with
his solemn, eager face, would have given a new joy to those crisp
mornings when the hope of wings coming to the gun makes poignant in the
sports man as nothing else will, an almost sensual love of Nature, a
fierce delight in the soft glow of leaves, in the white birch stems and
tracery of sparse twigs against blue sky, in the scents of sap and grass
and gum and heather flowers; stivers the hair of him with keenness for
interpreting each sound, and fills the very fern or moss he kneels on,
the very trunk he leans against, with strange vibration.

Slowly Fate prepares for each of us the religion that lies coiled in our
most secret nerves; with such we cannot trifle, we do not even try! But
how shall a man grudge any one sensations he has so keenly felt? Let
such as have never known those curious delights, uphold the hand of
horror--for me there can be no such luxury. If I could, I would still
perhaps be knowing them; but when once the joy of life in those winged
and furry things has knocked at the very portals of one's spirit, the
thought that by pressing a little iron twig one will rive that joy out of
their vitals, is too hard to bear. Call it aesth