YELLOW clay,-the name is not attractive, the substance is not beautiful, the associations are neither of health nor enjoyment. Barren shrubs, sickly reeds, rank disorderly herbage, are the natural characteristics of yellow clay all the world over; while to unfortunate humanity it is connected chiefly with garments caked from heel to waist, with slovenliness and with rheumatism. Test it, if you will, in the so-called paradise of New Zealand, on the cold comfortless hills round Wellington where men have felled the forest that once hid their nakedness, and you will find the blackened corpses of the trees shrouded in wiry unprofitable bracken, and English gorse struggling with noxious native weeds for a hold on the miserable soil. Or go no further than English Devon, a county generally remembered by tracts of rich red loam and cliffs of stern gray ironstone, and there you will see, stretching from the Cornish border full thirty miles eastward, a large patch of as wretched and inhospitable country as ever raised a thistle. Clovelly, with all its beauties of cliff and wood and wave, is within a few hundred yards; but visitors seldom turn their eyes from the sea to mark what manner of land it is that thus abruptly ends in a precipice of ironstone above the Bristol Channel. And they are right, for it is condemned to hopeless infertility, and all green things are crushed between the hammer of the west wind and the anvil of the yellow clay.

And yet there is something to be loved in the yellow clay. We speak not as an agriculturist, for though we have been assured by many a farmer

that it is capital land for summering bullocks in dry seasons, we cannot forget that dry seasons are not the rule in Devon, and that the little red cattle of the country possess to a singular degree the virtue of growing fat upon poor fodder. Moreover we have a not wholly grateful feeling towards certain men of a past generation who sunk thousands of pounds in the endeavour to improve some of this detestable land and make two blades of grass grow where one declined to grow before; a philanthropic effort which resulted only in the temporary discomfort of innocent snipe, and the lasting impoverishment of a deserving posterity. But we love this yellow clay for its steady refusal to be improved. Most people have in their hearts a secret admiration for any creature that declines to be tamed, whether it be horse or dog or man. It is true that the fate of such is generally to be shot or hanged or otherwise cleared out of the way; but no such summary measures can be taken with land. You may gash it with drains and gutters, but if it be irreclaimable yellow clay you will hardly leave so much as a scar upon it; and your efforts will be as fruitless and, if you would but confess it, only less ridiculous than those of Xerxes to chastise the Hellespont. Wild animals that shrink from the discipline of man know the yellow clay for their friend and flock to it, just as men who shun order and obedience take refuge in savage lands. Wherefore to him that loves a really wild day's sport the bleak, inhospitable, forsaken land is a paradise indeed.

Of all months in the year Novem

ber is on the whole the best for a walk with the gun over the yellow clay, with a soft wind blowing from the south-west and a damp leaden sky overhead; a day when Lundy rises gray and cold out of a cold gray sea, and the herring-boats fly home with their red sails turned to gray, and the smoke of the coasting colliers throws aloft an almost welcome cloud of inky black as a plaything for the mild warm breeze. The great rolling range of Exmoor, twenty miles away, is half shrouded in mist; but, unless we are mistaken, the staghounds are even now jogging gently over the heather to the meet, and the old huntsman is remarking, as his horse sinks hoofdeep in the spongy soil, that "the water will fly on the forest" when hounds begin to run. But they must run without us to-day, for we have put on our very worst clothes for a long and dirty walk, and are filling our cartridge-bag. Shall it be twenty or thirty cartridges to-day? Twenty will be ample in all probability, but let us make it thirty, for the weight even so is trifling. And now let us begin the day, as always in North Devon, by climbing a hill. A steep narrow road, with banks four feet above our head and a bottom that the efforts of the Local Board strive in vain to alter from a kind of river's bed to a macadamised highway, leads us whither we are bound; and after a mile of travelling in the close muggy atmosphere we feel as though we were marching through tropical forest.

agone, and he had not seen many woodcock; there may be a pheasant or two, and there is a brood or two of partridges, though terrible wild; hares are almost extinct and rabbits very scarce; but we can't tell what we shall find till we try, and we had best walk through the beech spinney first, if we will please to take the left-hand side while he goes through the middle. The spinney aforesaid is but of two acres, a collection of miserable stunted trees which fight with infinite bravery a losing battle against the eternal wind from across the Atlantic. We scramble over a gap in the bank, smearing ourself all over with greasy yellow clay in the process, and, knowing the wild ways of the Devonshire spaniel, hasten forward alongside the spinney. The beeches sigh mournfully as though expecting a gale, and we only faintly catch the sound of wings in the trees behind us. We whisk round; nothing is to be seen; then again round, and there, a good forty yards ahead of us, are a long bill and two great lazy wings flapping leisurely off with all the assurance of an owl. We fire the first barrel at him instantly, and, unless the smoke has deceived us, he falls leisurely to the ground; but even while the report is ringing in our ear we hear the keeper yelling something unintelligible behind us, and again face rapidly to the rear. But this time the lazy wings are full seventy yards away, and as the second barrel is snapped after them they simply rise a few feet in the air and flap away erratically as if they might pause at any moment, on and on and on till they are fairly lost to sight. The keeper clambers out of the spinney, stands on the bank, and takes off his cap in despair. "There was two got up at my feet and went back," he says; "beautiful shots. I depended that you would have got the both." We endeavour to excuse our

self as best we may, and point out that we have killed one that went forward; but he will not be comforted. He had made sure that both would come to us, and if they did not the fault is obviously ours; but he adds with a shake of the head, "They'm false, they 'oodcocks; false as rats they be." And we, who know the similes of Devon and are aware that this comparison is the highest tribute that can be paid to the cunning of any wild animal, feel rather less guilty than we did.

And now we pass fairly on to the yellow clay moors, thousands of acres of rolling ground, the yellow grass dotted with clumps of gorse, and cut up by ragged neglected fences, sour and ugly and soaking with water. The spaniel, which so far has been kept rigidly to heel, seizes the opportunity to break away to the nearest gorse-clump, and in spite of frantic rebukes, declines to return.

"Chloe

-a, you wild old hermit," yells the keeper, for spaniels in Devon, for some reason, are frequently christened with classical names, and a hermit (we have struggled in vain to imagine why) is the measure of wildness. 'Why do you bring out a wild young dog?" we ask with asperity. "Oh, she's nine or ten year old," he answers with a sweet smile; and she isn't wild most times, but she's terrible hard of hearing. She'll be back in a minute, but I expect we'm best get on after her.' We think so too, and presently come upon her supremely busy on what is evidently a very faint line of scent. "Looketh like a pheasant," says the keeper softly; "please to keep on after her, sir." She puzzles it out, inch by inch, very slowly, and takes us on for three hundred yards to a gateway, which, as usual on these moors, is filled with a sea of deep mud and twelve inches of water. Here scent naturally fails, and the

keeper, who has come to the conclusion that we are on the stale trail of that rare animal, a hare, is for calling the dog off; but our curiosity is aroused and we insist on casting forward, to see whether nothing can be learned from the impressionable clay. Not a sign is to be found on this side; but on splashing through the water we find on the far side new tracks in the softest of the clay, and, where it grows drier, the unmistakable imprint of three long claws,-nay, in one favourable spot we think we can detect the mark of a spur.

The spaniel is called forward and laid on, but scent is weak from water, and she cannot own it; so we cast forward as gravely as though a fox were before us, and after some trouble hit the line once more. After a couple of hundred yards scent improves, and the spaniel's pace with it; and presently we drop our gun to the trail and are fain to run. Still on to a patch of gorse where the spaniel throws up for a moment, but after a few minutes of desperate excitement makes a sudden dash into a tuft of fern; and up rises a great cock-pheasant with all the astounding clamour that once so alarmed Mr. Briggs. have had such good sport already, hunting his drag up to his bed that, but for the keeper, we should be inclined to spare him; but old cock-pheasants are mischievous as vermin, and his fate is sealed. The spaniel picks him up and retrieves him with every sign of satisfaction, and we make a mental note of our run. Time, about twenty minutes; distance, not less than half a mile; and a kill in the open.

We

So far, good. We are already wet through and splashed from head to foot, so we make the more readily for a patch of bog that is a favourite with snipe. The ground quakes beneath us as though we were on bubbles, and we step warily, for if we break through

the thin crust of moss on which we walk, we cannot tell whether we shall sink to our knees, to mid-thigh, or to our armpits. Every instant we expect to hear the rush of wings and the shrill bleat of the little white-breasted bird; but it comes not, and we have almost given up hope when, with a louder whirr, an unexpected covey of partridges rises, a long shot ahead of us, and skims away with the speed of the wind. A snap-shot from our first barrel brings down the hindmost bird of them, and immediately a wisp of a dozen snipe rises three gun-shots before us, startled by the report, and vanishes out of our sight. It is exasperating, but it cannot be helped: on the moors one must kill what one can whenever one can; and the man who will not fire from dread of spoiling his own sport had better stay at home.

We watch the last of the snipe fade away against the gray clouds, when we are interrupted by a shrill voice shouting something unintelligible five hundred yards away. The keeper vociferates an equally unintelligible reply, and remarks that 'tis Mr. Buzzacott a-speaking, and that he made out the word partridges. Presently Mr. Buzzacott appears in person, as shabbily dressed as the poorest of his labourers, although he rents three hundred acres of yellow clay and better land; but he is received with great deference by the keeper, for he is the most eloquent preacher in the nearest chapel, and the keeper's wife is one of the pillars of his congregation. We have never sat under him ourself, but we know his discourses on hellfire by village repute as some of the most moving that ever were delivered on that favourite topic of dissenting orators; and being the descendant of French Huguenot refugees, originally called Boucicault, he has perhaps a better title to fervour than most of

his neighbours. He hurries up breathless and grasps our hand with great warmth. "They partridges," he says in the richest of shrill Devon, "be gone up to my little root-field, so if you will fetch a compass and come in to the far side of them, the birds will undoubtedly go to the little old withybed, where I've seen them scores of times. I think, moreover, that you will find another covey there. I have long been in doubt whether there was one brood on my farm or two broods, but what I have seen in the last two weeks satisfactorily convinceth me that there's two." Every syllable comes out crisp and sharp as the shot from a Maxim gun, so excellent is the practice of the pulpit; and we start at once to fetch the necessary compass round the root-field, walking too fast to waste another word.

Now," says Mr. Buzzacott, as he throws down a harrow, kicks away half a cartload of gorse, and tenderly lifts up the bars of a rickety gate which are held together by two straw bandages, as many hazel binders, and several pieces of string, "Here the birds be. There they go—da—” he adds, the warnings of the chapel forgotten for a moment in his excitement, but remembered in time to omit the final consonants and so save his conscience. "They'm gone right," he continues, intently watching the flight of the birds. "Now, sir, follow down my old fence, and you'm sure to find them, if you'll excuse me from attending on you further, for I am afflicted with the rheumatics." So off we start again to try down the fence for half a mile towards our lost covey. But the fence must be crossed, and that is no easy matter. First comes a deep ditch overgrown with gorse and thorns; then a bank broad enough to drive a coach on, also heavily overgrown with thorns, and so hollowed in the middle as almost to be cut in two; then an

other deep ditch of like manner with the first, and some remarkably soft. ground just beyond it. The folks that built such fences must either have been jealous of their boundaries or else keen sportsmen, for one never knows what game they may hold. We scramble through it somehow, with much splashing and scratching, while the spaniel selects the hollow in the midst and becomes busy at

once.

A rabbit dodging in and out alongside the ditch is the first victim, and a stray woodcock the second; and then the spaniel begins to run with a keenness that shows that but one animal can be before her. There is nothing for it but to run as near as we may alongside of her, and hope that we may not be beaten by the most cunning of birds; but running in the deep, slippery soil is no such easy matter, and a cross fence brings us up short. We are barely at the top, panting and breathless, when we hear the heavy flutter of a rising cock-pheasant, who skims away low on the other side of the fence, giving us no chance but a long snap-shot, which is duly fired without result. But the report flushes a wisp of halfa-dozen snipe, of which we have just time to pick off one, and then the bank beneath our feet slides away a small avalanche of greasy clay; we hang for a moment on our heels, pass swiftly on to the broad of our back, and then shoot down gracefully into the ditch below us. We are splashed up to the eyes, and caked with clay from neck to heel; the ditch is up to our waist, a protruding root has lifted our jacket over our head, and our face and hands are buried for a moment in a gorse-bush; but the voice of the keeper, unable from the other side of the boundary fence to witness the catastrophe, still urges us forward, we know not wherefore, and we

in

scramble out and on, loading and repairing damages as we go.

Out comes a rabbit, breaking boldly across the field, not too near, but a cross-shot, and therefore an easy one. He rolls over handsomely, and then, as usual, when one least expects it, up rises a covey of partridges, wild as hawks, but just within range. One bird falls to a very lucky shot, six more fly away, and we pause for the moment quite exhausted. The keeper, bewildered by the shooting of which he can see nothing, crushes his way to us through the boundary fence, and rejoices to find that there is something to be picked up, more indeed than we had expected, for the spaniel produces not one dead partridge, but two, though how the second can have come by his death, unless by the shot that killed the rabbit, before the covey rose from the ground, is a mystery. However, we are now satisfied that we have found both coveys, and that there are thirteen partridges for certain somewhere in the bleak acres around us, if we can only find them; not a great stock according to the ideas of some gentlemen of the gun, but to us on the yellow clay a multitude without number. Also, we have certain knowledge of one pheasant, and we may have the good luck to run against some more snipe.

It

So we tear on joyfully to the withybed, which is indeed no withy-bed, but a small sheet of shallow water, choked with high, sickly weeds, and surrounded with quaking moss. is not a place in which one would naturally look for partridges; but all wild animals, from the red-deer downwards, seem to have a passion for lying in a dry spot amid wet ground, so we approach it with all silence and caution. No bird rises, and the spaniel, now quite disciplined by hard exercise, is sent in to see what she can find. Still no sign of a bird.