About this time I enjoyed my first pigeon hunt in a roost. Being a boy about sixteen years of age, having a brother about thirteen, and as we had seen the pigeons going by to their roost for hours and knowing that many people went there every night to shoot pigeons on the roost, my brother and I were seized with a desire to go and enjoy this exciting sport. Then arose the difficulty of a gun suitable for the occasion. As we had nothing but a small-bore rifle and not owning a shotgun, we appealed to father as to what we should do for a gun. We had previously gained his consent to our going. He suggested that we take the old horse pistol; one of the Revolutionary time, which had been kept in the family as a reminder of troublesome years. Let the young man of to-day, who hunts with the improved breechloader, think of two boys starting pigeon hunting, their only outfit consisting of a horse pistol, barrel twelve inches long, caliber 12-gauge, flintlock, one pound of No. 4 shot, a quarter of a pound of powder, a pocket full of old newspaper for wadding, a two-bushel bag to carry game in, and a tin lantern. Thus equipped, we started for the pigeon roost a little after dark. Although three miles from the roost when we started from home, we could hear the sullen roar of that myriad of birds, and the sound increased in volume as we approached the roost, till it became as the roar of the breakers upon the beach. As we approached the swamp where the birds roosted, a few scattered birds were frightened from the roost along the edge of the swamp. These scattering birds we could not shoot, but kept advancing further into the swamp. As we approached this vast body of birds, which bent the alders flat to the ground, we could see every now and then ahead of us a small pyramid which looked like a haystack in the darkness, and as we approached what appeared to be this haystack, the frightened birds would fly from the bended alders, and we would find ourselves standing in the midst of a diminutive forest of small trees of alders and willows. We now found these apparent haystacks were only small elms or willows completely loaded down with live birds. My brother suggested that I shoot at the next "haystack." So we advanced along very carefully among the now upright alders till we came to where it was a perfect roar of voices and wings, and just ahead of us we saw one of those mysterious objects which so resembled a haystack.