The gamekeeper's cottage stands at the end of the oak lane. An orchard surrounds his dwelling, the brown boughs now drooping with ripened fruit. Under an overhanging sycamore is a kennel of silky-coated setters and a brace of spaniels. The former have beautifully-domed heads and large soft eyes. The spaniels with their pendulous ears are a black and a brown. Pheasant pens are scattered about the orchard, each containing half-a-dozen birds. In a disused shed are traps for taking game, and nets and snares found in rabbit runs or taken from poachers. The keeper does not always take these engines when he finds them, but waits quietly until they are visited by the "moucher;" then he makes a double capture. Few of the poachers, however, leave their traps after dark, and only the casual is caught in this way. At the other end of the orchard divisional boxes are ranged round an old barn-like building where pheasants' eggs are hatched. A shaggy terrier, with fresh mould upon its nose, peeps from beneath the shed doorway. Drowsy bluebottles buzz about the vermin larder, and under the apple-trees are straw-thatched hives. Contented pigeons coo and bask on the hot slates of the barn roof, and bird-sounds are everywhere. These blocks, upon which sit their falcons, act as a reminder of an old English sport fast passing away. These are merlins and peregrines, kept for a friend by the keeper, who is fond of hawking. The merlins can pull down partridges, while the peregrines are flown at larger game. No sport so exhilarating as falconry, none so fascinating. The interior of the keeper's cottage is as characteristic as its surroundings. Here are guns of every description--from the old-fashioned fowling piece and matchlock to the ponderous duck-gun. Above the chimney-piece hangs a modern breechloader with Damascus barrels. The keeper admires the delicate mechanism of this, but deprecates the spirit of the age which produced it. Such cunningly-devised engines will make old-fashioned sport, or what he calls "wild shooting," extinct. By this he means the traversing of rough ground in healthful anticipation of a miscellaneous and always uncertain bag. It is this very uncertainty which gives the chief zest to sport. Against the walls are cases of stuffed birds, with a red squirrel or a white stoat to relieve the feathers. In one case a knot-hole is imitated from which peer three young weasels; and an old one is descending the hole with a dead bird in its mouth. All these are portrayed to the life by the keeper's own hand. Looking at the contents of the cases, he deplores his want of ornithological knowledge in earlier years. Among the stuffed specimens are a Greenland falcon, a pair of hobbies, several rare owls, swallow-tailed kite, hoopoe, rose-coloured pastor, and others equally rare.