moor as thick as bees, and this warm rain will soon send them all back
again. I only went round through Fernworthy and Combe, and I have
killed five couple."

"Thank you, Mr. George, thank you," said John, "they are not so
plentiful as they were in old times, and I don't shoot so well either
as I used to do. My sight's going, and I can't walk far. It is nearly
time for me to go, I think."

"Not yet, sir, I hope; not yet for a long time," said George Hawker, in
an offhand sort of way. But Mary slipped round, kissed his forehead,
and took his hand quietly in hers.

John looked from her to George, and dropped her hand with a sigh, and
soon the lovers were whispering together again in the darkness of the
window.

But now there is a fresh footfall on the garden walk, a quick, rapid,
decided one. Somebody burst open the hall-door, and, without shutting
it, dashes into the parlour, accompanied by a tornado of damp air,
and announces in a loud though not unpleasant voice, with a foreign
accent--

"I have got the new Scolopax."

He was a broad, massive built man, about the middle height, with a
square determined set of features, brightened up by a pair of merry
blue eyes. His forehead was, I think, the finest I ever saw; so high,
so broad, and so upright; and, altogether, he was the sort of man that
in a city one would turn round and look after, wondering who he was.