Having enjoyed such a breakfast as keen sportsmen are accustomed to take, in the course of which we talked over the feats of the morning, and bestowed many well earned encomiums upon the staunchness and sagacity of my dogs, my friends proposed to start again for the field, till dinner time. I, however, positively refused to budge an inch, declaring that I would not fire another shot that day. I was, I told them, more than content with having killed ten brace of pheasants in one day, and therefore I would remain at home with Mrs. Vezey, till they returned. They tried hard to prevail upon me to accompany them, but I resisted their entreaties: they then endeavoured to rally me out of my plan, but I had made up my mind not to go out again, and consequently all their bantering was of no avail. I was not to be moved even by the good humoured jokes of the farmer, about my remaining alone with his wife; and, finding me to be immoveable, they set out by themselves. At length they returned, bringing with them one solitary pheasant, though they acknowledged that they had had ten shots each; and they were afterwards candid enough to confess that the dogs had actually caught that. Nothing daunted by their bad shooting, after they had dined and taken a sufficient quantity of good old stingo, and once more tried in vain to persuade me to bear them company, they sallied forth again, for the evening's sport; the best time of the day for pheasant shooting. About eight o'clock they came back, but they had only killed another pheasant, notwithstanding they assured me that they had actually seen above one hundred. Thus had these two sportsmen only killed three pheasants in the whole day, having had between them upwards of _fifty shots;_ while I had killed ten brace at twenty shots, in about three hours. Of course I laughed at them heartily; in which I was joined most sincerely by Mrs. Vezey. I am quite certain that if I had continued in the field, and followed up the sport as my friends did, I should have killed _fifty_ pheasants instead of _twenty;_ and that too without having made them appear much thinned, so plentiful was the game in that country. After spending a very pleasant evening, we returned to Marlborough, where I slept with my friend Hancock, and shot my way home the next day; having, previously to my setting out, _equally divided the game_ between the _three_, which was always the case in those friendly parties where I made one of the number.