to keep the Colonel in much better order, ‘flirting him down,’ as I used to call it, than I’ve ever managed to do since I grew old--that is, less young than I was at that time.” And so this good woman, or rather this woman who, despite her faults, had some good in her, whereby she vindicated her title to humanity, ran on until Alice heartily wished her back again amongst the tawneys, or the tigers: we are afraid that at that especial moment our little heroine would decidedly have preferred the latter. In the meantime, Harry and the Colonel were blazing away at the long-tails most unmercifully: Harry, who was a crack shot, bringing down everything he pointed his gun at, while the Colonel, whose hand had an awkward trick of shaking, as if its proprietor was in the habit of imbibing too much port-wine, missed much oftener than was agreeable to him, on each of which several occasions he attributed his failure to, and condemned in no measured terms either the gun, or the bird, or both. About two o’clock Harry pulled out his watch, and glancing at it observed--“I don’t know what your arrangements may be, Colonel, but if Mrs. Crossman is of as sociable a disposition as my little wife, she will consider us great bears if we don’t return till dinner time.” At this moment a splendid cock-pheasant rose, “whirring” into the air at some considerable distance from the sportsmen, whereupon the Colonel, considering it a difficult shot, called out, “Your bird, Coverdale.” Harry, embarrassed with his watch, which he still held in his hand, raised his gun, and catching his finger in the guard chain, pulled the trigger too soon, and missed with both barrels, while the Colonel, seeing that the pheasant was now so far off that it could be no discredit to miss it, pulled at it, and by accident brought it down. “Bravo! Colonel, that is the cleverest shot that has been made to-day by long odds!” ejaculated Harry. “Ah! that’s a trifle to what I used to do when I was your age,” was the slightly apocryphal reply; “nothing with feathers or hair on it had a chance, if I put my gun up at it, I can tell you. But what were you saying about going home? why I’m just getting into shooting order; you’re not knocking up, to be sure, already.” “No; nor six hours’ more hard walking would not do it,” returned Harry, laughing, as he mentally contrasted his own powers with those of the Colonel, who, although he had carefully assigned all the toughest of the work to his guest, was evidently beginning “to want his corn,” as Coverdale metaphorically paraphrased the fact of his entertainer’s requiring his luncheon. “I merely asked you whether Mrs. Crossman would not disapprove of our remaining out all day?”