I--GOBO STRIKES

One day--it was about a week after Allan Quatermain told me his story
of the "Three Lions," and of the moving death of Jim-Jim--he and I were
walking home together on the termination of a day's shooting. He owned
about two thousand acres of shooting round the place he had bought in
Yorkshire, over a hundred of which were wood. It was the second year of
his occupation of the estate, and already he had reared a very fair head
of pheasants, for he was an all-round sportsman, and as fond of shooting
with a shot-gun as with an eight-bore rifle. We were three guns that
day, Sir Henry Curtis, Old Quatermain, and myself; but Sir Henry was
obliged to leave in the middle of the afternoon in order to meet
his agent, and inspect an outlying farm where a new shed was wanted.
However, he was coming back to dinner, and going to bring Captain Good
with him, for Brayley Hall was not more than two miles from the Grange.

We had met with very fair sport, considering that we were only
going through outlying cover for cocks. I think that we had killed
twenty-seven, a woodcock and a leash of partridges which we secured
out of a driven covey. On our way home there lay a long narrow spinney,
which was a very favourite "lie" for woodcocks, and generally held a
pheasant or two as well.

"Well, what do you say?" said old Quatermain, "shall we beat through
this for a finish?"

I assented, and he called to the keeper who was following with a little
knot of beaters, and told him to beat the spinney.

"Very well, sir," answered the man, "but it's getting wonderful dark,