Archer, any ways; and arter I’d pulled half a moment I hard him plump down into the crick with a splash, and the water sparkled up like a fountain where he fell. So then I didn’t wait to load, but ran along the bank as hard as I could strick it, and when I’d got down to the spot, I tell you, little Dash had got two on ’em out afore I came, and was in with a third. Well, sich a cuttin’ and a splashin’ as there was you niver did see, none on you—I guess, for sartin—leastwise I niver did. I’d killed, you see, the drake and two ducks, dead at the first fire, but three was _only_ wounded, wing-tipped, and leg-broken, and I can’t tell you what all. It was all of nine o’clock at night, and dark as all out doors, afore I gathered them three ducks, but I did gather ’em; Lord, boys, why I’d stayed till mornin’, but I’d a got them, sarten. Well, the drake I killed flyin’ I couldn’t find him that night, no how, for the stream swept him down, and I hadn’t got no guide to go by, so I let _him_ go then, but I was up next mornin’ bright and airly, and started up the stream clean from the bridge here, up through Garry’s back-side, and my bog-hole, and so on along the meadows to Aunt Sally’s run—and looked in every willow bush that dammed the waters back, like, and every bunch of weeds and brier-brake, all the way, and sure enough I found him, he’d been killed dead, and floated down the crick, and then the stream had washed him up into a heap of broken sticks and briers, and when the waters fell, for there had been a little freshet, they left him there breast uppermost—and I was glad to find him—for I think, Archer, as that shot was the nicest, prettiest, etarnal, darndest, long, _good_ shot, I iver did make, anyhow; and it was so dark I couldn’t see him.” Many of his friends and mine will recognize the character, to whom I allude, as he figures largely in the pages of “The Warwick Woodlands,” from which the above extract is taken, of “My Shooting-box,” and the other sporting scenes of Frank Forester, wherein nothing good or generous or kind is related of Tom Draw, that does not fall far short of the reality. Before closing this article, I will correct an error into which I perceive I have inadvertently fallen in the first page of it, wherein I said that this duck, _alone of the family_, has the habit of perching, roosting, and nesting on trees.