was the most brilliant that I have ever seen. When you went in there
together, Sir Junius, you were thirty ahead of him, and you fired
seventeen more cartridges at the stand."

Then, just as we turned to go, something happened. The round-eyed
Charles ran puffing into the quadrangle, followed by another man with
a dog, who had been specially set to pick my birds, and carrying in his
hand a much-bedraggled cock pheasant without a tail.

"I've got him, my lord," he gasped, for he had run very fast; "the
little gent's--I mean that which he killed in the clouds with the last
shot he fired. It had gone right down into the mud and stuck there. Tom
and me fished him up with a pole."

Lord Ragnall took the bird and looked at it. It was almost cold, but
evidently freshly killed, for the limbs were quite flexible.

"That turns the scale in favour of Mr. Quatermain," he said, "so, Sir
Junius, you had better pay your money and congratulate him, as I do."

"I protest," exclaimed Van Koop, looking very angry and meaner than
usual. "How am I to know that this was Mr. Quatermain's pheasant? The
sum involved is more than £5 and I feel it is my duty to protest."

"Because my men say so, Sir Junius; moreover, seeing the height from
which the bird fell, their story is obviously true."

Then he examined the pheasant further, pointing out that it appeared
to have only one wound--a shot through the throat almost exactly at the
root of the beak, of which shot there was no mark of exit. "What sized