He bagged, amid Tom's mighty exultation, forward again we went and in a
short half hour got into the remainder of the pack which we had flushed
before, in some low tangled thorn cover, among which they lay well, and
we made havoc of them. And here the oddest accident I ever witnessed in
the field took place--so odd, that I am half ashamed to write to it--but
where's the odds, for it is true.
A fine cock bird was flushed close at Tom's feet, and went off to the
left, Harry and I both standing to the right; he blazed away, and at the
shot the bird sprung up six or eight feet into the air, with a sharp
staggering flutter. "Killed dead!" cried I; "well done again, Fat Tom."
But to my great surprise the grouse gathered wing, and flew on, feebly
at first, and dizzily, but gaining strength more and more as he went on
the farther. At the last, after a long flight, he treed in a tall
leafless pine.
"Run after him, Frank," Archer called to me, "you are the lightest; and
we'll beat up the swale till you return. You saw the tree he took?"
"Aye, aye!" said I preparing to make off.
"Well! he sits near the top--now mind me! no chivalry Frank! give him no
second chance--a ruffed grouse, darting downward from a tall pine tree,
is a shot to balk the devil--it's full five to one that you shoot over
and behind him--give him no mercy!"
Off I went, and after a brisk trot, five or six minutes long, reached my
tree, saw my bird perched on a broken limb close to the time-blanched
trunk, cocked my Joe Manton, and was in the very act of taking aim, when
something so peculiar in the motion of the bird attracted me, that I
paused.
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