The keeper looks his best in autumn. To many the sight of him then is most welcome, especially if the prospect of sport be fair, and the day of fine promise. People who go to shoot season after season on one estate are greeted year by year by the same friendly faces, nearly all of them a little the worse for time's passage. The host is seen to have aged between this October and last, with his butlers and his beaters and bailiffs. The foreheads of the familiar old horses seem to have sunk a little above the eyes. The dogs are remembered as playful puppies; the headstrong creatures now grow grey about the muzzles. Boys employed of old as "stops," when their height was less than the length of the hares they dangled proudly over their backs, have now qualified for the army of beaters; they have long since learnt the wisdom of not leaving their "stopping" places to forage for hazel-nuts. All these have grown older, and perhaps the visitor himself heaves a sigh as he looks down on his own once trim and slender figure. * * * * * The Keeper grows Old To the keeper alone of the time-honoured gathering seen on the lawn before the house on an early October morning have the years been kind. Over his face the winds have swept lightly; hardly an impression has been made on his complexion by the sun, moon, and stars, and the hail, snow, frosts, and mists of the year. On his forehead half a century of life has ploughed no furrows. His cheeks are free of wrinkles; there are no crow's-feet about the outside corners of his eyes. He holds the secret of youth. His cheeks might be a girl's; there is a smoothness and suppleness about the skin of his face. Still the muscles of his arms stand out with proud fulness. And his eyes remain the keenest spy-glasses of the party. His limbs are supple and free; a gamekeeper hardly knows the meaning of stiffness. But you may notice now that he straddles mightily over the gate which of old he vaulted with the glide of the fallow bucks in the park. And if you were with him when, at the end of a long day, he goes home to his tea, by chance you might hear the remark made to his good-wife, "Well, mother, I bain't sorry to sit down." He looks his best in autumn; and he feels his best. He is ready for the test of his labours. He has had worries enough; the rearing season has been a "shocking bad one," and he has had many late nights, watching his birds. Perhaps he has had toothache; that is not unknown to keepers. Often he has been soaked by rain, and more often by the dews of night and morning. But he has lived all the year in the open and in the country, and there is the secret of his youth. * * * * * Rabbit Ways in Autumn