Wagram opened a gate noiselessly, and with equally noiseless tread moved along one of the "rides" of a wood. On his shoulder was a rabbit rifle--one of some power and driving capacity--with which he was wont to practise long shots at outlying but uncommonly suspicious and wideawake Bunny. Things rustled in the undergrowth and brambles on either side, as though stealthily creeping away. A slight stirring of the grass caught his eye, and, as he bent over it, an adder contracted itself into a letter S, with its heart-shaped head somewhat lifted, alert, defensive. He raised the rifle so as to bring down the butt upon the snake--then seemed to think better of it. "Poor little brute. The chances are ten thousand to one against it ever damaging anybody in a place like this, and those chances it can have the benefit of." He touched it with the muzzle of the gun, amused by the impotent wrath wherewith the small reptile struck at the cold iron. Then he went on his way. He reached a gate and peered over. Two or three rabbits were out feeding, but they darted like lightning into cover before he had time so much as to raise the piece. Passing out of the gate he crossed the open meadow. In front a gleam of water, and beyond it the skipping forms of young lambs, whose shrill bleat harmonised with the multitudinous bird voices, and the green loveliness of the picture. Leaning lazily on the parapet of an old stone bridge which spanned the river, Wagram watched the ripple here and there of a rising trout, or the perky flirtings of a pair of water-ouzels, whose nest clung, excrescence-like, against one of the stone piers. Away down stream the roof of a picturesque old mill, its wheel for the nonce still and silent, and beyond, pointing above more woods, the spire of a distant church. Again that well-nigh ecstatic sense of possession--of ownership--came over him, and now, giving himself up to it, he fairly revelled in it. The utter solitude of the spot constituted, in his eyes, one of its greatest charms. He could wander at will without meeting a human being, and though here the bridge carried on a public thoroughfare it was a lonely road at any time. But one side of such solitude was that thoughts of the past would arise, would obtrude, and such he steadily put from him. For he hated the past. Not one day of it would he willingly live over again--to no single incident of it would he willingly let his mind revert. It was a very nightmare. Leaving the bridge he strolled up the tree-shaded road intending to return home. But no chances did he get of practising marksmanship, for the rabbits seemed unaccountably shy. Ah--at last. There was one. Nearly a hundred yards' range, too. Yes, it would do.