The tenant
roundly declared the keeper a rascal, and told his master so in written
communications. The keeper declared the tenant set gins by the wood, in
which the pheasants stepped and had their legs smashed. Then the tenant
charged the keeper with trespassing; the other retorted that he decoyed
the pheasants by leaving peas till they dropped out of the pods. In
short, their hatred was always showing itself in some act of guerrilla
warfare. As we approached the part of the woods fixed on, two of the
keeper's assistants, carrying thick sticks, stepped from behind a hedge,
and reported that they had kept a good watch, and the old fox (the
tenant) had not been seen that morning. So these fellows went round to
beat, and the guns were got ready.
Sometimes you could hear the pheasants running before they reached the
low-cropped hawthorn hedge at the side of the plantation; sometimes they
came so quietly as to appear suddenly out from the ditch, having crept
through. Others came with a tremendous rush through the painted leaves,
rising just before the hedge; and now and then one flew screaming high
over the tops of the firs and ash-poles, his glossy neck glowing in the
sunlight and his long tail floating behind. These last pleased me most,
for when the shot struck the great bird going at that rate even death
could not at once arrest his progress. The impetus carried him yards,
gradually slanting downwards till he rolled in the green rush bunches.
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