Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

Meanwhile the main body had felt the rising pulsations of Mother Ocean, and, like an innumerable flotilla of tiny strange craft, they, too, had been approaching with the inflowing stream. In the soft sand were numerous worms and molluscs, and those tiny atoms of life which duck assimilate with avidity. In the faint luminosity prevailing, whether from a clouded moon or the natural light on the water, their movements were plainly visible. A duck floating on the surface would suddenly dip its head beneath the water; then deeper and deeper it went, till the main part of its body was submerged, and the tail and a pair of wildly-moving web-feet were all that remained in sight. Further seaward the duck dived down clean out of sight after the food they were in such need of, coming up to the surface for a moment, shaking their heads and necks clear of water, then disappearing in a flash again. Other birds, more fastidious, maybe, followed in the rising waters, and never dipped deeper than their neck-length. The duck feeding with peaceable cutterings to one another made a pretty sight; yet, unknown to the casual observer, a grim tragedy was occurring right in his sight. Bird after bird dived down and never rose to sight again. The deep-water feeders gave no sign as their numbers were diminished by the score; odd birds feeding in middle depths might have been seen to splash a little as their tails and web-feet were gradually covered by the rising water, while among the shore-haunters there was occasionally a little commotion. Birds were being suffocated on all sides, yet the survivors heedlessly went on gorging, till——For, pegged flat along the sand-banks, the fishermen had left their nets, ready for the ground-loving flocks which would come up with the tide. The duck, in diving and ‘grobbling’ about for their food, got their heads so firmly fixed among the meshes of the nets that they could not withdraw them again, and so were slowly done to death.

* * * * *

Not every one of the village fishermen had got out to his nets. We could hear a ramshackle cart coming clattering down the stony lane behind us. Immediately the belt of shingle was passed, the solitary figure in the vehicle put the horse to its best trot over the swelling sands. It was old Jack, the man whose nets were planted furthest seaward, and it behoved him to move quickly, lest the tide should again cover them before he had taken his toll of their contents. As we rambled further and further out, the shore seemed to rise in altitude, and the great crag where a brave knight slew the last wolf in the countryside seemed to raise its bulk to a more commanding height. In front of us the fishermen’s carts were still far away, and across the channel daylight showed us the chimneys of a town, backed by a long sharp line of hills. In half an hour we reached the nearest cart. Looking into it, we saw a great mass of scales and feathers—the fish and the duck ensnared during the night. This man had completed clearing his net, and was busily pegging it down to the sand-bed, ready for another tide. We would dearly have liked to examine his load, but the man was too feverishly at work; therefore we looked around to see who had not yet completed their task, and, of course, first thought of the old man who in his cart had passed up a while ago. After a moment’s consideration, we decided to go as far as the point where his nets were, and to watch him empty them. A stiff breeze was blowing across the estuary, and helped us to run along to the old man’s netting-ground more easily. He looked up at our approach, and asked us to lend a hand, as the tide had turned and time was precious. My friend and I, therefore, got to work, jerking the fish and fowl clear of the meshes into baskets, which were emptied into the body of the cart in one confused mass. ‘There isn’t time to sort them,’ we agreed with reluctance. In maybe ten minutes we had half filled the cart, and stood watching the fisherman repegging down his nets. The breeze soughed coldly across the bleak sands, the sting of the frozen Northland in it, while the soft rush as the white rollers broke nearer and nearer on the sand-bank filled our ears. The old man directed us to assist in stretching the nets. ‘Be sharp!’ he said, without a glance at the fast-incoming tide. The last rope was stretched and the last peg driven, and the sea was roaring in a great stream not a hundred yards away. ‘Into t’ cart, and sharp!’ And on the instant we obeyed.

I had not looked landward for some time, and was surprised to find that our spit of sand was now cut off by a slowly-widening arm of the sea. If this was deep and we could not cross it in the cart, if it became furrowed with strong water and our cart was overwhelmed, then we would be in a dangerous strait; for swimming in the chill waters of a December tide is not to be contemplated without misgiving. But old Jack, with a word of encouragement to his horse, drove straight at the water. My feelings as I looked over the side of the cart were uneasy, and I watched the water rise upward from wheel-rim, by the thin spokes, to the axle, and higher and higher, till I heard it wash in the bottom of the cart around my feet. Our horse was plodding steadily away, though breast-deep in the tide. Deeper we sank, and deeper still, till our spoil of the nets was hidden in the flood, and the horse’s head and a strip of its back was all that was visible of it. Still on the game old animal steadily waded, and it became apparent that the perils of the passage were over. Immediately we came on to firm sand, old Jack leapt off the shaft on which he had stood, and called us to get out.

‘Now we must run for it The water’ll be pretty deep just outside the shingles.’

The old mare appreciated this remark as well, for it broke into its best lumbering trot, dragging the lightened cart, from which the sea-water oozed, at a fairish pace, to which we three kept up. A quarter of a mile in front was the shore, but a fast-running tongue of sea-water cut us off. Again we mounted the cart as the water was touched, and the blue-jerseyed fisherman drove straight ahead. I was not prepared for what now followed. A powerful undertow whirled us—cart, horse, and men—bodily seaward, while the swift stream striking the oaken sides of the vehicle threw spray right over us. But old Jack had been cautious in his selection of a point to pass the current, and the eddy of the fierce undertow brought the horse where it could take footing again, after which it speedily drew up into safety.

Of course, our first action, after changing our soaking clothes, was to examine the load of duck and flooks we had helped to bring to land. I had prepared myself for disappointment, but surely these damp, muddy, ruffled balls of feathers were not the same as the brightly-coloured, carefullypreened uniform of the ducks which had swum to the sand-banks when the moon was clouded o’er last night? The varieties we had looked to see—the scaup, the teal, the widgeon, etc.—were hardly distinguishable to our novice eyes, and ere long we gave up the attempt in despair. But one bird did interest us, and that was a neat-feathered northern diver, which is a rarity to the fishermen. As to the others, we did not feel it incongruous to their estate to hear them hawked about in the adjacent town that afternoon by old Jack to a sing-song of—

‘Fine fresh flooks alive, alive oh!
Alive oh, alive oh!
Fine fresh flooks alive, alive oh!
Alive oh, alive oh!
Now, my old lasses, come out with your dishes,
And I’ll fill you them full for a trifle.’

II. THE PERIL OF THE SANDS

One incident in the life of George Moore of Cumberland has always struck my imagination, and that is his narrow escape from drowning when crossing Morecambe Bay by the oversands route.

Outside the estuaries of the rivers Kent, Leven and Winster, sand-banks stretch almost level seaward for miles, and as the tides recede these soon become clear of water, and in the course of an hour have settled so firmly in most parts that heavy traffic may readily pass. And from the days of Roman legions marching across till the era of railways this was the crossing preferred by all traffic to and from Furness and West Cumberland. The way was fraught with dangers: sometimes a strong wind from the south-west held back the ebbing of the waters for an hour or more, and forced up the succeeding ‘flow’ long before the normal time. On many a stormy day the rush of a single comber blotted out, with a depth of blue water, acres of bare sand. Any conveyance midway on its journey would be simply washed away with such an eight-foot wave; horses and men encountered would be borne over without chance of escape. The channels of the rivers, being below the general sand-level, also constituted a peril. The banks were constantly crumbling under the action of salt water and fresh, and the direction and depth of the current at any given point varied much from tide to tide. At a point where last ebb the eau or river of the sea was fordable, now there might be a deep cavity filled with water, in which, should the driver venture, horse and man and conveyance might be easily lost. That such a thing has happened over and over again is the story told by hundreds of epitaphs in the burying-places of the surrounding countrysides. The third danger was that of quicksand—a terribly remorseless enemy to the traveller; while in misty weather and during the hours of darkness it was possible to lose all sense of direction over the bewildering level waste, and to guide your horse, perhaps, straight out to sea. Case after case could be cited of men going several miles out of their courses from such an accident: the number of mysterious drownings on the sands never to be properly traced gives the impression that those who escape after such mistakes are in a terrible minority.

George Moore reached Cartmel towards evening. He did not take time to inquire as to the state of the tide, but drove off at once towards the sands. It was a reckless undertaking, as he soon found out, for he was scarcely halfway across before he saw the tide was turning. The man who was with him in the carriage jumped out and went back. But George, believing that he was on the right track, drove on. The water was now approaching like a mill-race. He flogged his horses as he never flogged them before. The sand shifted beneath their feet, so he turned aside and drove where foothold still held. A mirage rose before him, and he seemed to see the land. But it disappeared and reappeared again and again. The situation became terrible.

At length he heard a loud shout from some person to the left. One of the mounted guides had seen his peril. The man spurred his horse into the water, suddenly turned round, and waved him to come onward in that direction. Moore understood his position at once, and pulled his horses round by sheer force towards land. By dint of flogging and struggling the horses at length touched the ground, dragged the carriage up the sands, and Moore’s life was saved.

Other equally exciting incidents occur to me as I write. Once the mail-coach when far out on the sands was struck by a powerful gust of wind, and blown bodily some hundred yards out of its course, where it capsized. The horses and passengers made for the shore as quickly as possible. Some days later the great vehicle was found near the tideway, and, after re-upholstering, was again put in use.

The dangers of the sands were so well known from the earliest times that the abbeys, and after their dissolution the Crown, were charged to maintain men whose duty it was to vigilantly study the tideway and conduct passengers safely across. The post of guide on the Kent sands was held by one family for over five hundred years.

During my wanderings in the districts near the sands, I have come across many who had stories to tell of perils braved or witnessed. What more perilous than to have, when your cart is far from shore, a wheel break under a sudden strain put upon it. Yet this happened when a family, some quite young children, was crossing the Leven sands. Two men set out for the nearest village to have the breakage repaired, leaving the women and children to make the best of it during the chilly night. It was several hours before the repair was completed, the tide had long turned, and the wheel was fixed against time. The delayed cart was saved with difficulty, for so high had the water risen that the horses were almost swept off their feet by the force of waves which again and again broke against the carts.

The story is told of a funeral crossing the sands being caught up by the tide; the coffin had to be temporarily left to the mercy of the seas. Another cortège, when halfway across, had to hasten to the shelter of Holme Island—not then, as now, connected with the mainland by a causeway—and from the rocky shores of this they watched the raging sea close over their tracks. More than once the mail-coach has struggled to this refuge when, after passing one of the river channels, the other was, through a sudden rise of the tide, found unfordable, and advance or retreat by the direct route was equally impossible.

But the narrative of one who crossed the sands in his early years—the old man has been dead some years now—is, even among such episodes as already mentioned, worth placing on record:

‘It was mid-afternoon when the gentleman for whom I was working as groom decided to pass from Lancaster to Ulverston. The month was February, and a faint griming of snow covered the land. The day had been hazy, and the weather-wise said a storm was brewing in a villainous-looking patch of clouds hanging out to sea. Of course I had to go, though I urged the undesirability of driving the horses through the cold waters of the channel. At half-past four we were at Hest Bank, having driven quickly over the frozen roads.

‘The folks at the inn advised us to stop there for the night, as it was growing dusk and the wind was rising. But on we went. The guide accompanied us to the Keer, and saw us safely across, then told us that by following a line of bushes planted in the sand we would in about a mile fall in with the Kent guide, who was mounted. We had scarce left this man, whose repeated warnings made me more uneasy, when from the sea there crept up a thick gray cloud, which so enveloped us that I had to dismount and lead the horses, for from our seats we could not see from one small tuft to another. I was thus puzzling out the route, when we came to a pool of water, at which the gray mare shied and then bolted. The loose rein was wrested from my hand, but as the carriage swept past I leapt and clutched the back. The horses ran for fully a minute—the distance was impossible to guess in the dusk of the cloud—before they could be stopped. And when at last they came to a standstill, imagine our plight! We were far out on those bleak sands without any knowledge as to where sound land lay; turn as we might, the open sea was a perilous thing to risk. The tide had turned, and would now be running in at a tremendous rate. Even should running waters be met with, these would give no clue as to direction, for they might be a river-current or a mere eddy of the waves. Then, too, the wind was rising higher, and from afar we heard the growling roar of the sea. “What shall we do?” said the master. I would not reply. The moment of indecision in his mind passed, and he continued: “John, this is one way to die. Let us drive onward somewhere. If so be that we take a wrong turning, it will be but a quicker ending.” I said now: “Let the horses try; they will turn for the land surer than we.” Well, the horses had by this time in some manner realized the danger; they stood shivering and pawing the sands, looking first to seaward, whence the subdued thunder was proceeding, then at one another in silence askance, and to us. At the word they walked steadily forward, bearing, as it seemed to me, somewhat to the left. “If this direction is correct, God help us!” I thought. I spoke to them again, and they quickened to a trot. The sound of their rapid hoofs for a while drowned in my ears that dull, insistent roar, to which, as my senses indicated, we were gradually coming nearer and nearer. Pool after pool of water was run into, but the horses were steady now.

‘All this time the cloud had been blowing along the sands, never lifting a fathom, but allowing some three lengths’ clear view ahead, and the wind blew still harder. Dusk it had been when we lost our way; it was almost pitch-dark now. Time and again I thought voices came through our enveloping shroud, but though I called often there was no reply. Sound did not carry far, and our loudest shouts seemed to be stifled on our lips. As I looked steadily ahead into the flurry of snowflakes, which accompanied a stiffer squall than usual, I thought the chestnut’s ear twitched as though sensitive to something occurring not far away. Then the gray cheered up—it had been doggedly pressing against the collar for some time, as though the previous terror had sapped its strength—and I turned to the master at my elbow. His face was lit with expectation, tempered with doubt. He forestalled my question. “Do you see that? I have been watching for a few seconds, though I didn’t speak, for fear it might be a delusion.” But our animals broke into a canter, and shortly the air around us was filled with the sounds of cracking whips and shouting men; and it didn’t take more than a second for us to realize that we had fallen in with a band of carriers laden with goods for the Ulverston market. Where we had been in our perilous wandering will never be known, but we returned to safety quite close to where the Kent was to be crossed. The carriers had planned to stay the night at Cartmel, and to cross the Leven sands after the morning tide, so we stayed in their company. During the night, however, the threatening storm burst; and at daybreak the sea in the channel raged so wildly that not one would venture, and all made the détour over hilly roads to Newby Bridge, and so to our journey’s end.’

SPORT AMONG THE FELLS

I. ALONG THE HEATHER

It is always with exhilaration that the sportsman hears the first wing-rush of the season, and sees his first covey of grouse whirl along the heathery waste. The gun is thrown up, and on the instant the bird is singled. At the report a few feathers are struck up from the winger. Almost instantly the fury of its pinionings ceases, its flight droops, and becomes more and more unsteady, till with a thud it reaches the grass just as your retriever gets within distance.

In our district of rough shootings, the twelfth is the only festival the gunner observes, for the grouse is our stable game-bird. But though restricted in its variety of sport, ours, also, is one of the few areas in which genuine old-fashioned shooting is to be had. The exigencies of falling revenues has stopped the heavy stocking and close preserving formerly the custom, and our birds are almost always wild—wild with the freedom of the spreading moorland, not with the wildness of terror. Beating is rarely resorted to by the occupiers of our shootings, for men are scarce in upland valleys.

The evening of the eleventh closed down over the steeps in lurid fashion, and at dark a storm was whistling along the nearby braes. Our keeper, however, held that by sunrise the worst of the tempest would be spent, and that a clear day was in store for us. However, when we arose the gale still shrieked along the uplands, driving huge banks of cloud before it. The rain had ceased some hours before, but every dell was occupied with a roaring flood, and the bosky places were palpably saturated. The keeper, who appeared to have spent the whole of the wild night patrolling the only route by which poachers could reach the moor, was decidedly of opinion that, bad as the weather was, it was still improving rapidly. The clouds, whirling ghostlike in the uncertain light, were less frequent, and did not fall so far down the slopes. Now and again the surf of billowy white passed clear of the fellside for a few seconds.

Up and be doing was advised; and, as we were in friendly rivalry with the holders of the other moors as to whose gun should fall the earliest bird of the season, in a few seconds we were striding through the woods, listening to the eerie voice of the gale in the reeling pine-tops, or to the gushing down secluded ghylls of creamy torrents.

In ten minutes we were on the bleak moor; the pressure of the wind was so strong that we could barely keep our feet. The grass was beaded with raindrops; the tangled bushes through which here and there we had to force a passage shook drenching showers upon us. Walking along some half-mile, we got into the shelter of a great rib of mountain; and here the keeper anticipated sport. So far not a bird had stirred, or even called; whether they had deserted the exposed brae or were unwilling to rise, I cannot say.

Now, looking across the deep, narrow valley, we espied at a great distance another shooting-party passing through the heather in extended line. Our keeper chuckled:

‘T’ Ferns folk’ll not git t’ first birrd to-day.‘

I was not so certain, for I had seen two wee puffs of smoke rise from the centre of their line. But though the slow advance checked, there was no crowding together to congratulate a successful first shot.

The presence of rivals spurred us on, but, try as we would, not a bird could be found in the wet, quiet hollow; then, worse than all, a fine gray veil drew itself between us and our distant view, growing rapidly more dense, till we could see but a few yards.

‘Ferns wins,’ groaned I; but the ever-confident Jack claimed that it would require a finer shot than any of theirs to down a bird on that gusty moor. ‘But what of the flukes—eh?‘

‘We’ve as much chance as they. Keep a sharp lookout as we come opposite to these screes, and fire at the first thing that moves.’

Of course, this was what we were bound to do. In a few minutes the cloud blew aside, and just as its final skirts were rushing from the heather and scree in front, up rose with wild clamouring a covey of grouse. There was a sharp crackle as four guns belched forth together on them. Down went three birds. Whose was the first? Well, each claimed the honour, but the gamekeeper, as final referee, laid down that when shots are simultaneous the order of birds reaching the ground must count. The scene of this informal court was dramatic: the weathered old man, his kindly face lit up with delight at our referring the matter to him; the three splendid dusky-red birds laid neatly in front; the dogs wandering around, probably contrasting this delay with our usual pushing habits; and our four faces showing varying degrees of anxiety as we awaited the veteran’s decision. For a minute he sat silent and motionless, his gray-clad body standing out against the dark heather and gray-lichened crag of the rolling, windy moor, and when his first point was again agreed to, he declared that the cock was the first down. As I was the only one who had singled him, it was _my first grouse_.

Now half an hour more we waited for better light, with a possible lifting of the mist-curtain sufficiently high for sport to be more than intermittent. And after a while things certainly began to be brighter. As we patrolled along, the birds rose better and the guns got into better use. But all day the wind remained powerful enough to aid the birds’ escape.

Another year the circumstances of shooting were easier, the weather was fine, our stock promising, and our first bird was got very early. One of the dogs ranging in very delight in front flushed a small covey from a dot of heather just beyond the garden palings, and our youngest gun dropped a straggler. The chances of a kill at the long range were so remote that no one else attempted a shot.

Than the moors on a fine September morning I cannot conceive a fairer space. At midsummer the bees drone sleepily over the blooming heather, the little runnels murmur distantly from their grass-hidden courses. Of bird-life little is to be seen; the grouse cower among the heather until near sundown. As we stand by the weedy tarn this morning, however, there is ample evidence that the spreading mantle of chocolate and green is thronged with life. Here the path crosses a boggy tract where dirty jets of water spurt over our boots; now we encounter bouldery ground, and the path winds among the greater fragments. Anon we brush through a narrow channel running athwart a waste of heather.

‘There they go!’ There is a sharp rustle among the grass, some hurried wing-beats and a hoarse call ‘come-back, come-back,’ and a splendid covey of grouse sail away from us. But not a gun is raised, for the gamekeeper has expressly stipulated that in this basin of green swamp and sparkling dot of water, chosen haunt at all times of wild-duck, not a shot is yet to be fired. Regretfully we trudge upward on the rugged path to the top of the slope.

Now the dogs are released, and the line of guns shakes out. The old keeper, as a special favour in return for early summer inquiries about his broods, walks close beside, constituting himself my loader. I know this moor well; for several years I have watched the seasons pass over its face of spreading bracken and stiff, erect heather; otherwise I might be impatient.

‘It’s a bit noisy for t’ birds here,’ is an apology hazarded by the old man; ‘a good many sheep have been driven across there this last week.’ ('Across there,’ indicated by a sweep of his arm, is a moorland road, lonesome-looking enough to-day.)

A gun is discharged at the far end of our line—I cannot see exactly by whom, as we are in a slight fold of the moor, then quite a small volley. A covey has flown right down the line of guns. In a moment the birds whir across my line of vision, but they are too far away for a shot. This glen illumined by the morning sunshine is like a piece from fairyland. Sphagnum in all stages, golden and white and green, and gray-green bent; tinkling streamlets and moss-hung rocks; every blade of grass, every branchlet of heather, every frond of fern and bracken, is decked with beads of dew, and the sunshine revels in each and every drop as though it were a crystal prism, throwing off glories and halos of rainbow hues.

In a minute we clear this little gully and are again level with the others. Each man carries his own game-bag (save myself, whom the veteran serves), and will do his own loading; but game is sparse, and for five brace apiece we may have to tramp as many miles. However, there is always magnificent scenery and bracing air, and now and again there will be lively incidents—sequences of shots as rapid as you can fire and exchange shells. ‘Nerves’ on such occasions are almost sure to leave you with an empty game-bag.

So along we tramp, shooting where any opportunity arises. The dogs go through their work thoroughly and cheerfully; we guns are young and athletic, so that the long walk does not tire us. At lunch-time we are close to a disused sheepfold, in the lee of which our meal is spread. During the half-hour rest we indulged in we got the old keeper to tell us stories from his own experience. He has been on various estates, and commanded all sorts of shooting; but with middle age the homing instinct turned him to the land of the fells and lakes again. He had amassed what was to him a competency, but his hands could not drop the gun altogether, and he gladly accepted his present position—a lucrative pleasure, not a labour to him. And this was the story he told us, between puffs of a black clay pipe, as he sat on a lichened stone with his back against the wall of the sheepfold:

‘Many years ago, near one of the best shooting estates in the Fells Country, there lived two poachers. Their ancestors had been frugal and thrifty, so that a small farm—twenty or thirty acres, maybe—and a cottage were left to these two. To meet them on the country roads or in their fields, they were simple, slow-speaking farmers like their neighbours. But to see them making nets and snares when the storm howled round the little house—as I have done—they were smart craftsmen. And in the dark woods and leas, or by the salmon streams, the most alert watcher could never find Dick and Ned. They could thread the worst-tangled glades without a sound, for they knew every inch of them. As to game, whether fin, fur, or feather, Dick and Ned were sure somehow to get a large share of it. Their house and bit of land lay between two wide sheep-farms. Their only sister had died when the lads were sixteen, their parents some time before, and after that bereavement the only companions they took were a dog and a cat. Concerning which there is a story.

‘The two men were sat at breakfast, when Dick said, in his chanting voice:

‘“Ned, thoo likes thy dog.”

‘“Dick, thoo likes thy cat.”

‘And at this the two joined battle. And when at last a chance caller at the house intervened and drew them apart, both men were dripping with blood. As quickly as they had fought they fell back to the old intimate intercourse, Ned alone remarking:

‘“Well, ah’ll hae to kill thee some day, Dick, and ah’ll might as weel ha’ done it noo.”

‘They were always like that, a word and a blow, till the keepers for miles around were almost all afraid of them, and purposely timed their beats to avoid the men. Ned, after a three months in gaol secured him by the old Lant Braithwaite, was one day working by a peat-pot [a bog-hole, generally partly filled with water], when that keeper came up and spoke cheerily to him. For reply, Ned—a stout man he was, and hard as an otter—gripped Lant, and after ten minutes’ hard struggling threw him into the water. And, not content with that, the villain actually leapt with both feet on to the prostrate man’s chest, and held him to suffocate beneath the shallow waters.

‘Luckily, however, the struggle had been noticed by other men at work on the moor, and the poacher was by main force pulled away from a brutal murder. Of course, even in that slack time, when a policeman was never seen outside the county town, such a thing as this had to be looked into. Ned the poacher was arrested and thrown into prison. When he came before the magistrates, one of them hailed him with:

‘“Well, Ned, Lant has got you again.”

‘“Ay, reet enough,” was the off-hand reply; “but he wodn’t [wouldn’t] if ah’d hed t’ peeat speead in me hand.”

‘What a present-day bench would say to a bloodthirsty address like this from a poacher, I don’t know, but keepers’ lives were held cheap in those days. Magistrates who would hang a man for stealing a sheep only inflicted a short sentence on the killer of a keeper. However, this time some big man took an interest in getting the poacher his due, and Ned finally got ten years’ transportation.

‘While he was away Dick was constantly in gaol. Perhaps he was less desperate than his brother, but I don’t know. Two water-bailiffs once came upon him laden with salmon, fresh netted, on a bridge. They tried to arrest him, but he was a strong man, and threw first one and then the other over the ledge. It was a sheer forty feet, and a horrible flood was dashing through among the rocks. But if keepers were cheap, bailiffs were cheaper. Both men managed to struggle out of the torrent many yards lower down, one with a broken arm and a badly cut head, but nothing was said about it.

‘Dick passed in and out of gaol till Ned’s long term was up. One wild February morning the gray castle gate opened and the poacher walked out. He was a hardened and unforgiving beggar; for the first thing he said, as he fixed his eyes on the bleak sunrise, was:

‘“Well, ah’m oot again, and noo Lant Braithwaite an’ thoo be alive, I’ll kill thee afore this time to-morn.”

‘At mid-day a great snowstorm closed down, and hourly became worse. At about four o’clock a knock came to Lant Braithwaite’s door; it was opened by his grandson. An elderly, rough-looking man asked:

‘“Whar’s old Lant?”

‘And the wide-eyed youngster replied: “Why, he’s gone up ower t’ fell-end to Tom Brackenrigg’s. He wain’t [will not] be back till varra laet [late].”

‘“All right;” and the questioner, moving away out of the fold, was soon lost to view in the driving snow. After, these long years Ned had at last located his victim, and now, with long-stored rage in his heart, he made up the snow-covered moor-path. “Me legs aren’t as stiddy as they used to be,” he muttered to himself, as he stuck fast and then collapsed into a deeper drift than usual. But, determined on his evil course, though he was still racked with weakness and gaol-fever, he straightened himself on to his feet and pushed on into the whirling blast.

‘About the same time old Lant Braithwaite at the moorland farm threw down his hand of cards.

‘“Bejocks, Jackie!” he said to his partner, “ah’ve clean forgitten to look at them traps doon be Blin’ Tarn edge. Ah’ll away.”

‘And, despite all arguments to stay, the old man—he was now upwards of seventy—set out. He spoke to a shepherd who was forcing his way against the seething gale to attend to his flock, and that was the last time he was seen alive. Next morning a search was made, and old Lant was found frozen stiff in the green copse you can see the tops of from here.‘

‘And the old poacher?’ a voice queried.

‘Ned was found dead, an awful baffled look on his face, crouched up among the heather just this side the ridge—near that big boulder above the beck course. Though within half a mile, he never found his enemy, after all.‘

‘And Dick?’

‘Well, Dick hung about in a shiftless way for a while, then went clean away, and one fine morning, when the lilies bloomed among the rocks around, he was found drowned in the Fairy’s Kailpot down the next dale.’

As the old man concluded his gruesome story, he rose to his feet and whistled the dogs together. A minute later the line of guns was spreading anew across the moor. ‘Watch for hares,’ was the veteran’s instructions, but, alas! puss is becoming rare with us, and we never saw a scrap of fur. The old keeper likes to have the harriers once a year across the moor, because, he says, as the visit is planned late, the noise scatters the birds, and prevents too much in-breeding. How far his idea is correct, I cannot of course say. The birds rise very slowly on this part of the moor, but they are strong, and your gun has to be deftly and rapidly used when they come.

‘Stop!’ said the old keeper suddenly, as we stood on a rise overlooking a tinkling streamlet. And as he spoke the dog in front flushed a bunch of birds from the outskirts of some heather. I fired rapidly, both barrels, and had the satisfaction of hitting each time. One bird was knocked over and over by the impact, and fell immediately, but the other on stiffening wings sailed away for thirty yards or so. The other members of the family with wild calls whirled out of sight over the next ridge.

‘Quietly,’ said the old man; ‘we must have another shot at them.’ And we had; before we had gone a hundred yards they rose in a bewildered, scattered flight, and, to my delight, down to the heather thumped another brace. These were my last shots that day, though we ranged the moor a couple of hours longer. The total bag averaged three brace per gun—not bad, considering the sparseness of game and the fact that two members of our party had discharged but a single cartridge apiece.

II. ROUGH THE BEAGLE; OR, A RABBIT-SHOOTING EXPEDITION

The morning was dull but clear. Behind us a lonely wayside station, with an overtowering background of mountains; in front a grand piece of rolling country, with a far-away line of blue peaks. It was early October; the march of autumn following on a wet summer had been so slow that as yet hardly a tree was shedding its leaves; the hedgerows were dense and mostly green, and, as we passed from the road, the grass, both permanent and aftermath, was long and tangled. For a mile we walked by field-paths and through sunken lanes, spongy and rutted, damp with the exudations of countless hidden springs. Three of us, two gunsters and a rambler, and a dog. At the end of much seemingly aimless tramping we reached the boundary of the small shooting.

‘Now,’ said the principal to his fellow, ‘you take those fields to the right, while I try around the marshy pasture on this side.’

I put the leash on the dog and followed with caution. Rough was black, white, and tan, and of the rough, genuine beagle type. There was nothing of the harrier or miniature foxhound about him. Also he was a show dog, with a proclivity for not looking his best on the correct occasions, therefore with his perfect shape and colour adding to his master’s store of ‘commended’ certificates.

Our premier gun was a slender, erect man, one who possessed a thorough knowledge of many kinds of outdoor sport, linked with a shrewd faculty for observation. He was a first-class shot. Means and manners of fur and feather by wood and water and lea were as an open book in his sight. Every nook and cranny of the two farms was known to him, and he had already reckoned out the possibilities of our day’s work to a nicety. His companion, though keen on sport, was possessed of ‘days.’ At times he would bring off with ease almost marvellous shots, to fail on the following day in an almost elementary style. He was a well-set-up man and accustomed to work requiring organization and patience. Surely shooting rabbits as they run from feeding-ground to burrow would test this latter.

Down the dewy grass in the shadow of the hedge the principal stepped in silence, his gun ready, watching and listening acutely for the rush of the first rabbit. But it didn’t come at present. Rough walked steadily in the leash, and a moment after was loosed. Away he went, ranging the hedgesides thoroughly, but not a stray rabbit could he find. All four fences of the small pasture were visited. Rough’s tail was indicative of eager anticipation, but his tongue was silent. Down the chief ditch where a patch of ragged-robin grew he passed slowly, carefully. Rabbits had been astir here, but not recently enough to make the scents workable. We turned down a ghyll, a declivity with steep grassy banks, just before the other gun, with a rabbit dangling in his hand, joined us from the other pastures.

The steep field to our right, bounded by thick wattled hedges, was a known haunt, and dog, guns, and the wanderer alike were on the alert. But though we scanned the breadth of windswept ‘fog,’ not the slightest indication of fur was there. Rough, ranging down towards the foot of the glen, began to quarter the tiny level beneath the rise, and almost immediately up jumped a big rabbit. For a few seconds its rushing form was seen through the topmost ash-stems fringing the stream which drained the ghyll; then, as it ran above them, there was a double crack, both guns firing at once. The furry body rolled over and over, then came to rest just as the pursuing Rough galloped up. Now, a beagle is not, like a trained retriever, to be commanded with a word at a moment like this. It runs up to its quarry, and, should it not be dead, worries it till satisfied. This penchant, though in Rough almost small enough to be innocent, caused one or other of us, after each shot, to ‘pick up.’

A minute or two later the leathern bags to contain the day’s shoot, and our present instalment thereof, were being deposited in the stable of the farmhouse, after which we moved on again. Right opposite us, when orchard and cottage were cleared, was a steep bit of bank, where freshly-moved earth showed that rabbits were in active occupation. There was no chance of approaching this stronghold unseen from our present direction. It was a place for ferreting, rather. We now neared another rivulet. Rough was all excitement, straining to the limit of his leash, yet not violently rebellious of restraint. The principal motioned his friend to advance towards a gap in the thick sycamore hedge. Gun at the ready, he crept forward. We watched alertly. Beyond the hedge seemed to be a small field. The swelling ridge we had been passing here broke into a sheer front, not rocky, but grassy, and decked with hazel and oak and ash, pitted here and there where the soil perpetually frittered away. This face of the bluff was likely to be honeycombed with burrows, and the natural feeding-ground of their occupants would be the narrow level W—— was reconnoitring. I saw his gun go up, there was a couple of sharp reports, and W——, jamming fresh cartridges into the breach, was plunging across the stony beck course in the hope of getting a parting shot at some outlier. But if such there were, it did not come within our range of vision. W—— mounted the gap and walked out to ‘pick up.’ With Rough now at liberty, questing bramble and bush in a systematic manner in front of us, we now negotiated the very wobbly gate (or hurdle) which divided us from the coppiced bluff. The principal now turned to me.

‘Stand well back, and call if Rough drives anything among the bushes.’

The angle of the short rise was so severe that I could not do this properly till I had retreated into the bed of the streamlet. Rough was ranging, often hidden from sight by intervening bushes, halfway up the slope. From his excited movements, game had apparently been astir not many seconds ago. Trail after trail he struck, but each time the makers were safe aground. A moment of silence, then he gave tongue—a wild, musical clarion-call to the chase—and with head down and stern up flashed in and out among the bushes. A rabbit had crossed the brae in front of him toward the cluster of burrows opposite which W—— had posted himself. The sudden intrusion of a bustling enemy roused the rabbits sheltering in the further half of the coppice, and Rough’s grand voice rang out again and again as he galloped about.

‘Mark, to your left!’ The fur was making a dash across a narrow gap commanded by the distant gun. W—— slewed around quickly and fired. His eye was barely off the rolling body ere there was another sharp rustle among the grass. A rabbit was descending the brae in a frantic attempt to reach its hole. The shot, though at very short range, was not easy, for the rabbit presented a very foreshortened length, and was moving with the added impetus of the steep slope.

Rough was still frantically busy among the undergrowth in the closest part of the coppice. Rabbits were being dislodged without doubt, but they were able to get to earth without coming into our sight. One essayed to break in our direction, and the beagle, after a sharp backward glance, allowed it. The principal was ready the moment cover was left, and did not miss. The rabbit, though far up the slope when hit, rolled an inanimate corpse to within my reach.

It was now apparent that the occupants of the bluff-end coppice were thoroughly aroused to their danger, and that scant further toll would be extracted for the present, so we turned back—Rough most regretfully, and only in obedience to many calls and whistles—and surmounted the wobbly fence. At the crest of the bluff we walked across an intervening field to a dense-bottomed hedge, haunt of various outliers from the colony in the wood. One gun took each side the fence, Rough working ahead of them, and myself wandering a bit wide in the hope of flushing a ‘clapped ’un’ from the sodden long ‘fog’ grass. At first Rough didn’t seem very willing to work the hedge, probably because no game was there, contenting himself with trotting alongside. But before he had gone thirty yards he was all keenness, wriggling through the smallest smoots (tracks) to change fields every few seconds.

But not a rabbit would budge. For several hundred yards Rough wriggled and scampered, then paused with his nose scenting the air opposite a clump of impenetrable thorns, whimpering, and his lean body quivering with enthusiasm. But I guess this was the haunt of a cute old rascal who, from the secure mouth of his hole, was enjoying Rough’s quandary, and every few seconds exposing enough of his unreachable self to taint the air for the beagle’s nostrils to snuff. Quite a minute this probable by-play went on, and at the end our white companion moved on again by the hedgeside.

‘Stop!’ said the principal, close to whom I was walking. Throwing his gun up, he stepped backward some ten yards, his eyes all the while intent on something among the tushes of grass. Then he fired. There was a convulsive moment as a white body rolled over and over. The rabbit was but a small one, and as it lay had quite escaped my notice. Probably forty yards on the same incident occurred, but this time I sighted the frail, white-lined ears like two dead leaves above the grass. It is wasteful to shoot such tiny padders, but as they sit among the grass, with only a pair of ears visible, it is impossible to hazard a guess as to what size the creatures really are. To flush them and give them law in a field full of curious heifers means losing them, or risking serious damage to the bovine spectators.

The hedgerow finished, we turned farmwards, walking fairly wide apart to beat up as much ground as possible. Rough’s restless movements on the left sent a big rabbit leaping right across our front. Moving at speed, a rabbit presents much of the poetry of motion. How regularly its limbs curve and straighten, and its lithe body bounds in response to muscles hard as steel hidden beneath the soft gray-and-white fur. Yet this one, though blessed with abundant energy, did not get to cover before the principal’s gun spoke.

At the homestead, as it was not yet time for lunch, we deposited our game, and examined the vegetable-garden. It is surprising how often during the noisiest hours of the days rabbits may be flushed from harbours where they must lie in daylong peril from the small host of sheepdogs ranging all over the place. But to-day Rough pushes through tufts of raspberry-canes and beds of cabbage without a sign of success. Next to the field behind the farm, marching across the tangled tussocks and examining the hedges without raising a flutter. Then down to the barn, where we sat on the hay-seeded floor (for furniture there was none), with the fragrant ‘mow’ for back-rest, and lunched off an enormous pie.

While this duty was being attended to, the next move was also discussed: the principal, Rough and I were to take another turn at the beckside coppices, while the other gun would try up the glen to the marshy field, our opening place. At the gate out of the fold we separated, but, instead of keeping below the bluff, struck upwards, to where it fell away abruptly. As we stood there, partly hidden by a thick veil of full-leaved sycamore, we had an almost bird’s-view of the little feeding-ground W—— had so completely raked from the beckside two hours agone. Beyond the hedge, betwixt wood and field, was a little reddish-brown patch—almost out of range. If, as to my eye seemed most probable, this was merely an upturned sod, to fire would be to startle the outliers to the burrows. If the patch was really a rabbit, so near to the coyer of the hedge was it that its slightest leap therewards would cause it to be lost to us. I was thus undecided; but the principal, more accustomed than I to the vagaries of furred creatures, raised his gun. There was a very slight movement of the reddish-brown spot—it _was_ a rabbit; the high-pitched crack of smokeless powder echoed along the hillside, and the patch had disappeared. Hit or miss? The fence at the top of the brae was a stout one; its top being wattled into an unbreakable bullfinch to capering heifers and young horses. I handed the gun over, then followed suit. Four long, sliding strides carried us down the worst pitch, and in a few seconds we were by the watercourse. My companion lay his gun down and climbed over the hedge to seek his rabbit, a search I prosecuted among the rank nettles and long tangled grass on my side, but for some little time neither of us succeeded. The principal, finishing his side, began at the opposite end of my more difficult beat. At that moment a rabbit, its eyes glazing in death, rolled out from among the evil-smelling garlic into the beck course not two yards from where I stood. The long shot had therefore gone home.