'The hedger stopping gaps, amid the leaves, Which time o'erhead in every colour weaves; The milkmaid passing, with a timid look, From stone to stone across the brimming brook; The cottar journeying with his noisy swine Along the wood side, where the branches twine; Shaking from many oaks the acorns brown, Or from the hedges red haws dashing down.' But the scenery was lost on the sportsmen, who had eyes and ears for the pheasants alone! The keepers and beaters were waiting at the corner of the King's Wood when Roland and his friends made their appearance. Though the copses had not lost all their autumnal glory, the season was an advanced one; a cold breeze swept down the grassy glens, and frost rime hung for a time on boughs and thick undergrowth, sparkling like diamonds in the bright morning sunshine, till melted away; and in the clear air was heard that which someone describes as the indescribable and never-to-be-forgotten sound for the sportsman--that of the pheasant as he rises before the advancing line of beaters--when the cock bird, roused by the tapping of their sticks on the tree trunks, whirrs high over the tops to some sanctuary in the wood, which the gun beneath him fates him never to reach. A spirt of smoke spouts upward, some brown feathers puff out in the air, and with closed wings the beautiful bird falls within some thirty yards of its killer. Though the shooting was most successful, other coverts than the King's Wood were tried, some of which gave pheasants, others rabbits and hares, till fairly good bags were made; and so the sportsmen shot down the side of a remote spur of the Ochil hills--save the banging of the guns no other sounds being heard but the beating of sticks against trees or whin bushes, and the voices of Gavin and the beaters shouting, 'Mark cock,' ''Ware hen,' 'Hare forward,' and so on, till a dark dell was reached--a regular zeriba (Roland called it) of bracken, briars, and gorse--where luncheon was to meet the party--one of the not least pleasant features of a day's shooting; but the sportsmen had become so intent on their work that they now realized fully for the first time that the day had become overcast; masses of dark gathered cloud had enveloped the sun; that dense gray mist was rolling along the upper slopes of the hills, and in the distant direction of Earlshaugh, the dark and blurred horizon showed that rain was pouring aslant, and so heavily that Maude and Hester, who had promised to bring the viands in the pony phaeton, would not dream of leaving the shelter of the house. 'Homeward' was now the word, but not before the last beat of the day--reserved as a _bonne bouche_--was made, though noon was past and gloom was gathering speedily. At the upper end of a little glen a long belt of firs bounded a field beyond which rose another belt, and in the field the guns were posted, while the pheasants could be seen making for the head of the wood.