But before it was reached the pace slackened; she made
ineffectual attempts to double as the slow spaniels overtook her, but
her strength was ebbing, and they quickly ran in. Reloading, and in none
of the best of tempers, I followed the mound. The miss was of course the
gun's fault--it was foul; or the cartridges, or the bad quality of the
powder.
We passed the well-remembered hollow ash pollard, whence, years before,
we had taken the young owls, and in which we had hidden the old
single-barrel gun one sultry afternoon when it suddenly came on to
thunder. The flashes were so vivid and the discharges seemingly so near
that we became afraid to hold the gun, knowing that metal attracted
electricity. So it was put in the hollow tree out of the wet, and with
it the powder-flask, while we crouched under an adjacent hawthorn till
the storm ceased.
Then by the much-patched and heavy gate where I shot my first snipe,
that rose out of the little stream and went straight up over the top
bar. The emotion, for it was more than excitement, of that moment will
never pass from memory. It was the bird of all others that I longed to
kill, and certainly to a lad the most difficult. Day after day I went
down into the water-meadows; first thinking over the problem of the
snipe's peculiar twisting flight. At one time I determined that I would
control the almost irresistible desire to fire till the bird had
completed his burst of zig-zag and settled to something like a straight
line.
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