CHAPTER XII.

FAREWELL.

"HONOR, darlin', here's a letter for ye," was Mr. Blake's greeting one morning, when my stay at Bogleeze had been prolonged over three weeks; "and here's one for you too, Charlie; who would be at the trouble of writin' to either of ye beats me intirely!"

I should say that the post at Bogleeze was a somewhat uncertain and desultory institution; the nearest post-office was more than twenty miles off, and the delivery of the letters that accumulated there was altogether a matter of chance. Sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl, in the hopes of a shilling and a meal, would take their shoes off, sling them on one side of their neck to balance the post-bag on the other, and jog over the mountain, appearing at breakfast, to return in the course of the same day. Some excitement was of course caused by the arrival of the letter-carrier, and our host always went through the process of opening the bag, and sorting and delivering the letters personally.

Honor blushed, I fancied, as she opened, and, after looking into hers, left the room, informing her uncle that "Cousin Phelim "-Phalim, she pronounced it--might be expected to dinner that day. My own epistle contained a peremptory order to return at once to Alma Mater, and prosecute those studies I had lately relinquished in favour of more congenial ones. This was indeed a heavy blow, and I felt like a whipt schoolboy, as, with Larry for my companion, I started forth on what must be for many a long day my last shooting expedition.

Our sport was, as usual, good, and the bag, besides snipes, wild fowl, and grouse, contained six or seven woodcocks, which were just arriving, and, tired with their flight, lay well amid the thick heather, and under the rare hollies. One singular circumstance happened to-day; I had shot a grouse, which lay fluttering on the ground within twenty yards of me. Don was looking idly on, Rap, as usual, had started off in search of the survivors of the family, I was reloading, when, with a mighty rush and whistling of wing, an eagle swooped down, passing within a yard of my head, and carried off the grouse from under my nose, as it were.

The boldness of birds of the hawk kind when in pursuit of their prey, especially of wounded birds, is very great. I hardly ever wounded a snipe but

it was at once chased by a pair of merlins, or other small hawks, that appeared to have been "waiting" on me for the chance; but such cool impudence as that of the eagle in question I never witnessed. To destroy and devour wounded or unhealthy birds is the mission of these "free lances" of the air, and I long since came to the conclusion, whether I was the first to do so I know not,* that the origin of the grouse disease is that undue interference with the laws of nature, which is involved in the extirpation of what gamekeepers are pleased to call "vermin," the hawks and kites, buzzards and harriers, which formerly abounded on the bogs and moors, and pounced down upon every sickly or maimed bird, now left to perpetuate a diseased and weakly progeny.

The same disposition to attack the weak, wounded, and helpless is shown in fishes. A pike will lie "hushed in grim repose," half hidden by the weeds, for days together, whilst tender dace and glittering bleak play about his very nose, and no attempt is made to capture them; but the moment your bait, an impaled specimen of one of

* Mr. Jenes, author of the well-known and most amusing sporting brochure, The Tomie-beg Shootings, assures me that he arrived at the same conclusion many years since, indeed, on the first appearance of the disease.

*

these innocents, is brought under his notice, he dashes at it in the mistaken idea that it is a fish in difficulties, which he is about to appropriate. Hence, as I have said elsewhere, it is a mistake to make a spinning bait revolve too truly; a slight "wabble," indicative of weakness, is more captivating.

We talked—I mean Larry and I—of the priest, and his mode of dealing with his flock. Larry, as I have said, held his Reverence in the highest respect and dread; but there was something comic too in the poor fellow's account of his dealings with his flock.

"It's little, yer 'onner, some of the poor creatures have to live on, and no wonder there is more than one 'dead man's pool'† on the river. There's Widow Macree now, she keeps Corney Bodkin's Lodge, and there's a slip of a child left with her by a son that's gone to 'Merikee; she has just two shillings a week to live on, divil a penny more, it's God's truth."

"Does no one help her?"

"And who is there to help her, barrin' the

* Vide Thames and Tweed, article "Pike."

So called from the fact of a poor starved peasant having crawled to the bank to die; a flat stone would mark the spot where he was found.

masther here, and he's plenty as bad off nearer home.”

"But the priest, does he not visit her?"

Oh shure, his Rivirince visits her once a month." "To help her, I suppose?"

"Not at all; he just calls for his dues, once a fortnight,* thim's a shilling."

"Marriage fees? Faith, thin, they come mighty hard on a poor boy. When I was married on Biddy yonder-you know I had a wife before Biddy, and I thought his Rivirince would take less the second time-so I offered three half-crowns in place of the fifteen shillings; and if I did, I had better have left it alone, for when he was just comin' to the blessin' itself, he shuts up his book, and turns away from the altar quite unconcerned like. 'Shure,' says I, 'your Rivirince hasn't done with us intirely, and you not put the blessin' on?' 'Get up thin out of that, Larry,' he says; 'get up out of that, ye half-married vagabone you, ye world's divarsion,' he says; 'get up, and larn what it is to chate your priest,' he says. Shure, I was bound to pay the three half-crowns and another along with them, and it's a joke his Rivirince has agen me to this day."

With these and such like anecdotes Larry be