off, as we had a very bad road to go; and as he, being under petticoat government--to which he most loyally and dutifully submitted--was compelled to get home that night, taking me with him, the vehicle (horse and gig) being mine. I therefore pressed him to come away.… No, he would kill the _hundredth_ bird! In vain did I talk of the bad road and its many dangers for want of moon. The poor partridges, which we had scattered about, were _calling_ all around us; and, just at this moment, up got one under his feet, in a field in which the wheat was three or four inches high. He shot, and _missed_. ‘That’s it,’ said he, running as if to pick up the bird. ‘What!’ said I, ‘you don’t think you killed, do you?’ ‘Why, there is the bird now, not only alive, but _calling_, in that wood,’--which was about a hundred yards distance. He, in that _form of words_ usually employed in such cases, asserted that he shot the bird and saw it fall; and I, in much about the same form of words, asserted that he had missed; and that I, with my own eyes, saw the bird fly into the wood. This was too much! To miss once out of a hundred times! To lose such a chance of immortality! He was a good-humoured man; I liked him very much; and I could not help feeling for him when he said, ‘Well, sir, I killed the bird and if you choose to go away and take your dog away, so as to prevent me from finding it, you must do it; the dog is yours, to be sure.’ ‘The dog,’ said I, in a very mild tone, ‘why, Ewing, there is the spot, and could we not see it upon this smooth green surface if it were there?’ However, he began to _look about_, and I called the dog, and affected to join him in the search. Pity for his weakness got the better of my dread of the bad road. After walking backward and forward many times upon about twenty yards square, with our eyes to the ground, looking for what both of us knew was not there, I had passed him (he going one way and I the other), and I happened to be turning round just after I had passed him, when I saw him, putting his hand behind him, _take a partridge out of his bag and let it fall upon the ground_! I felt no temptation to detect him, but turned away my head, and kept looking about. Presently he, having returned to the spot where the bird was, called out to me, in a most triumphant tone, ‘Here, here! Come here!’ I went up to him, and he, pointing with his finger down to the bird, and looking hard in my face at the same time, said, ‘There, Cobbett; I hope that will be a warning to you never to be obstinate again!’ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘come along;’ and away we went as merry as larks. When we got to Brown’s, he told them the story; triumphed over me most clamorously; and, though he often repeated the story to my face, I never had the heart