The wet day brings the chance for doing various little carpentering jobs, long neglected. The keeper may have set himself the task of making a new hand-barrow before the coming of another pheasant-rearing time--a barrow for carrying the coops, two at a time, with the hen and precious chicks within, where a horse and cart cannot pass through the coverts. Perhaps he remembers a day when the crazy handle of the old barrow snapped off and upset two coops of his best birds. Then a wet day is a good day for sorting coops, and putting apart for professional treatment those beyond the keeper's makeshift craft. He can set about painting the whole ones. Now and again he must look to his ferret-hutches, and fit new wire-netting to the fronts if any meshes are rotten with rust--should the ferrets escape there is no telling what may happen. And guns are never the worse for an extra special examination, and a thorough cleaning and oiling. An all-round tidying-up of his varied assortment of tackle certainly makes for a temporary improvement in the look of his work-places--but, as it has been with every clearance, the same old lumber is once more reprieved. "You see," says the keeper, "it might come in useful some time." * * * * * When Foxes mate Soon after Christmas the gamekeeper hears the barking of foxes at night, and he well knows the reason. The foxes are searching for mates. And here is one of many reasons why hounds in these days fail to find foxes in woods never hitherto drawn blank. Hunting and shooting have disturbed the quiet of the coverts, the underwood harvest is going forward, the supply of fox-food is shorter than at any other time, and is most hard to catch; so foxes generally have forsaken their haunts, finding lodging in out-of-the-way places which offer some chance of peace and quietness. Followers of hounds have much to learn about the ways of the fox in January. They go from one blank covert to another, cheerfully riding an intervening couple of miles, while all the time the fox is lurking in a dell or a hedgerow only two hundred yards from the first covert drawn. Yet a suggestion that the dell or the hedgerow should be tried meets with silent scorn. This might be expected from people who hunt to ride, or people new to the hunting-field; but it does not become the experienced to pin all their faith to the well-known coverts. In a southern county hounds have disturbed no fewer than twelve foxes together--probably a collection of suitors for the pad of one or two eligible vixens. * * * * * A Keeper's Dreams