Up in the fir trees the nests of the pigeons are sometimes so big that
it appears as if they must use the same year after year, adding fresh
twigs, else they could hardly attain such bulk. Those in the ash-poles
are not nearly so large. In the open drives blue cartridge-cases lie
among the grass, the brass part tarnished by the rain, thrown hurriedly
aside from the smoking breech last autumn. But the guns are silent in
the racks, though the keeper still carries his gun to shoot the vermin,
which are extremely busy at this season. Vermin, however, do not quite
agree among themselves: weasels and stoats are deadly enemies of mice
and rats. Where rats are plentiful there they are sure to come; they
will follow a rat into a dwelling-house.
Here the green drive shows traces of the poaching it received from the
thick-planted hoofs of the hunt when the leaves were off and the blast
of the horn sounded fitfully as the gale carried the sound away. The
vixen is now at peace, though perhaps it would scarcely be safe to
wander too near the close-shaven mead where the keeper is occupied more
and more every day with his pheasant-hatching. And far down on the
lonely outlying farms, where even in fox-hunting England the music of
the hounds is hardly heard in three years (because no great coverts
cause the run to take that way), foul murder is sometimes done on
Reynard or his family.
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