Carefully, eagerly, I gazed out to mark the wary bird; but the discharge
of Harry's piece assured me, as I thought, that further watch was
needless; and stupidly enough I dropped the muzzle of my gun.
Just at the self-same point of time--"Mark! mark, Frank!" shouted
Archer, "mark! there are a brace of them!"--and as he spoke, gliding
with speed scarcely inferior to a bullet's flight upon their balanced
pinions, the noble birds swept past me, so close that I could have
struck them with a riding whip.
Awfully fluttered was I--I confess--but by a species of involuntary and
instinctive consideration I rallied instantly, and became cool. The
grouse had seen me, and wheeled diverse; one darting to the right,
through a small opening between a cedar bush and a tall hemlock--the
other skimming through the open oak woods a little toward the left.
At such a crisis thought comes in a second's space; and I have often
fancied that in times of emergency or great surprise, a man deliberates
more promptly, and more prudently withal, than when he has full time to
let his second thought trench on his first and mar it. So was it in this
case with me. At half a glance I saw, that if I meant to get both birds,
the right-hand fugitive must be the first, and that with all due speed;
for but a few yards further he would have gained a brake which would
have laughed to scorn Lord Kennedy or Harry T--r.
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