Hear them scream and coo in the wood to the right. Hear the leaves crackle down on that slope where the snow is off under those tall beeches. The ground is fairly blue with them. Softly there over the dry brush! See them turning up the leaves for beech-nuts: they are all moving this way. Down, behind this log: they are not twenty yards off. Cock both barrels; and now fire! What a stunning sound they make, like the roaring of a tornado! Look, they have settled down again on the other side of the ravine. Well, here, Peter, what do you think of the fun now?--fourteen cock pigeons and one hen, to be divided between us. This is what _I_ call sport: none of your reed-birds and meadow-larks, such as cockney sportsmen frighten away from the fields of Jersey or Long-Island. Here they come again by scores. Now let us see how good a shot you are. Two cocks on the topmost branch of that old maple, full forty yards to the trunk. No, no! don't get any nearer, for they see you. Well done! Hear him thump on the leaves; and here comes the other, fluttering round and round like a shuttlecock. Ten to one that you shot him through the head. There! I told you so! His wings are not hurt, but a shot has cut away his bill. Here, Dancer, don't bite him so, but bring him here! Chick, chick, churr! Mister Red-squirrel, we'll 'give you a few,' as Jared used to say. On that knot in the green hemlock, he sits with his tail spread out over his head, for all the world like a young miss in a high-backed, old-fashined easy-chair. Well, we wont harm him, for the sake of the associations his comical appearance awakens. Dancer is barking down in the ravine. There he comes! as if he were crazy; he is on the track of a hare! Do you see that pair of slender ears pricked up behind the roots of that fallen tree? Let me try my skill at a long shot. I've hit them, that's poz! No, I haven't either; for the nimble-footed thing is scudding away round the hill as safe as if I had not wasted my loading on her.