The short December day has drawn to a close. There has been warm work in the coverts. A thousand head of game--pheasants, hares, and rabbits--have been brought to bag. In fact, we have had, not indeed a tremendous battue, as these things are reckoned nowadays, but simply “a jolly day’s covert-shooting.” But now darkness--thick, gloomy, winter darkness--has settled down like a pall upon the woods. There is some snow upon the ground, and with the night has come a sharper frost and a bitter, piercing wind. But what is that to us as we gather together in the warm dining-room, where the lamps are so bright, where the logs burn so keenly, and where thick curtains ward off the draughts of that nipping, eager air, and deaden the sound of the gusts moaning fitfully without? How delightful a festive dinner like this after our day of woodland sport! And yet, as I have raised the first glass of champagne to my lips, a thought has sometimes come to me which has gone nigh to spoil my pleasure. It is the thought of that cover where the fun was so fast and furious, and which literally seemed to swarm with game. I picture it as it is _now_ under the darkness of night. There, within sight of the bright lights around which we are so joyously gathered, _there_ are scores--hundreds may be--of miserable creatures with mangled limbs and bleeding wounds; some with hind-legs broken, dragging themselves piteously over the frosty ground; some writhing in agony which death comes all too slowly to relieve. Ah, if that wounded hare could speak, as she looks at the line of light streaming from our dining-room windows, what a curse might she not breathe against the cruel savages within! What a contrast! _Here_, light, warmth, and pleasure; _there_, darkness, cold, and pain unspeakable! Are not _these_ considerations which should give us pause? And can it be denied that the man who has learnt to stand at “a warm corner” unmoved while wounded beasts and birds are struggling or piteously crawling in agony all around him, who can listen unmoved to the terrible cry of the wounded hare--a cry like that of a child in pain--can it be denied that that man, who has so deadened his susceptibility to the sufferings of his humble and helpless kindred of the animal world, has himself suffered grievous injury to that which is best in human nature--that sacred instinct of compassion, wherein some thinkers of no mean order have thought they discerned the origin and the very basis of morality?