However, I determined that I would do better the next time the rabbits appeared. This I did, for a moment later I saw a little bunch of fluff, no bigger than your fist, roll over and then lie still. One would have thought I had killed a bull moose, so generous was the applause of the keeper and Sir William. I felt like Mr. Winkle--or was it Mr. Tupman--when he shut his eyes and brought down the bird! I shot a number of times more but without success, and began to think I really must look more lively still. And I did! There were a few moments when no more rabbits appeared, though, from time to time, one of those slimy ferrets would come to the surface, stretch its long neck and look around to see if anything of interest appeared, and then silently melt again into the earth. Suddenly a head appeared from a hole some distance away. Sir William did not move--evidently had not seen it, so, thinking this was my chance I fired, and the creature rolled over, kicked once or twice, and then lay still. I looked for applause, but as you may have noticed the audience does not always respond at the moment one expects! There was a moment of silence, and then Sir William exclaimed: "Good Lord! You've shot the ferret!" The keeper groaned as if he had lost his only child, and said, with tears in his voice: "It was the auld un'." There was nothing to be said, and the keeper sadly buried his favorite, and I felt as if I were one of that party who had buried Sir John Moore: "Not a drum was heard. Slowly and sadly we laid him down!" We walked away without a word. There came, however, to my mind a story Sir William had told me as we left the house in the morning, of an American who came over to one of the great "Shoots" in Yorkshire and asked his host as they started out the first morning, "How much he ought to give the keeper?" and he replied: "It depends upon where you hit him." I laughed then, but I was not laughing now! For I was wondering what sum would make good the loss of an "Auld Un'." I gave the keeper what I could afford--indeed more--but I am not sure he will ever be the same man again! I know one thing. I could have bought a fat red deer for what that little handful of fluff cost me! As we started to leave the little clump of pines which had been the scene of the murder, the keeper threw the sack on the ground and said to the boy who had accompanied us--to bring home the rabbits, I suppose--"You can bring 'em home, Jock." He evidently had not the heart to gather up the remaining ferrets, and so strode away after Sir William. The boy looked up at me with a grin and held up the index finger of his right hand, on which there was the scar of a bite. I gathered that he and the "Auld Un" had not been the best of friends, and that there was one of the party who did not mourn its untimely death!