The fellow destroyed everything that came within reach with utter precision, and this was perhaps fortunate, for Foxleigh had neither title, coverts, position, nor cloth! And the Squire weighed one thing else besides--the pleasure of giving them all a good day's sport, for his heart was kind.
The sun had fallen well behind the home wood when the guns stood waiting for the last drive of the day.

From the keeper's cottage in the hollow, where late threads of crimson clung in the brown network of Virginia creeper, rose a mist of wood smoke, dispersed upon the breeze.

Sound there was none, only that faint stir--the far, far callings of men and beasts and birds--that never quite dies of a country evening.

High above the wood some startled pigeons were still wheeling, no other life in sight; but a gleam of sunlight stole down the side of the covert and laid a burnish on the turned leaves till the whole wood seemed quivering with magic.

Out of that quivering wood a wounded rabbit had stolen and was dying.