clear full shot here, and though the aim must
be equally quick as elsewhere, still there is a
great increase of chance for me.

But before I shed blood again in fair field
I bag two more rabbits in a less glorious way.
Redleaf, suddenly stepping up to me, quietly
points me out what seems a large flint at the
foot of a beech-tree some thirty yards off.

"It's a flint," said I.

"Bah! it's a rabbit," said he; "kill him."

I aimed at what must be the head. The
next moment the rabbit lay stretched out dead
upon the leaves, a drop of blood and a pinch of
bluish grey fur the only proofs of the cause of
his sudden decease. Presently I see another
cowering under a dead tree trunk, and I kill
him also just as he is springing up.

But it is Silvertup who shows me the true
path to glory, though "it leads but to the grave."
A rabbit comes trotting up the hill. Bang goes
"Murder," and the rabbit rolls over on the leaves
like a round ball of whitish fur, throwing such
a strange summersault that had you never seen
fire-arms you might have supposed it some mere
harmless trick of the live animal.

"Bang-bang" from different stations in the
wood, at intervals, go Redleaf and Stockton's
guns; sometimes, like other mortals, they kill,
sometimes they miss; often when Redleaf's first
barrel blunders, his second barrel corrects. I too
have my occasional moment of slaughter, for I
fire at everything, but as for Silvertup he never
misses but once, and then he kills with the
postscript shot.

Sometimes, from not quite understanding
which way the dogs are working, I find myself far
behind the other guns, and hear them squibbing
about such an immense way off, that the crack
of the shot comes quite faintly to my ear. On
these occasions, I generally stumble out of the
wood, when I can, into the spongy mossy path,
where the nets are reared. There I stop like
an Indian scout watching, till I see perhaps a
rabbit suddenly emerge cautiously from the
wood, and thinking himself safe and unseen,
dasli at the fatal opening where the treacherous
net walls out hope.

Sometimes, with the speed of lightning, the
frightened animal turns back into the dog
beleaguered wood; but more often, just as I run
up to bag him, down comes an ash stick on his
skull, and a boisterous voice shouts, "I say,
Mas'r Kippur, I've been and clubbed another
rabbit." The voice is that of one of Redleaf's
shepherd-boys, who, under covert like
myself, has been watching stealthily the same
animal.

But now it gets late; the furze has all been
drawn, the dogs have worked every part of the
wood; it is time for lunch. The net-stakes are
pulled up, the dead rabbits are taken down from
the dead fir-boughs, where here and there they
are hanging; we all converge to one point, and
that point is the old lodge in the wood, where
luncheon has long ago been prepared.

Rasper whips in the dogs. Badger and his
retinue groan under grievous burden of rabbits.
Stockton, Redleaf, Silvertup, and myself, a
trifle tired, lounge towards the lodge.

The cheese in great moist wedges awaits us;
the cider is ready in its great stone jar; the
loaves are duly cloven; the strong XXX ale is
frothing in the horns; the guns stand in the
corners; long rows of rabbits, twenty couple at
least, lie in the outhouse; the keeper and his
men seat themselves on distant benches, joking
under their breath about Barker's appetite and
Fitzpayne's laziness; and we eat and talk.

STRANGE AND YET TRUE.

WHEN the evening lamps are lighted, or,
rather, just before that operation—say in the
little interval which follows the retirement
of the ladies from the dining-room, and
precedes the appearance of the laughing,
sceptical faces left temporarily below—a grain of
ghost-talk mingles, not inharmoniously, with
the gentle and domestic topics invoked by
the subdued light and confidential feeling of
the hour. The treatment of the subject is
necessarily superficial. Twenty minutes will
not suffice for a dive into philosophic deeps.
Facts are simply adduced. Theme and
proposition are laid bare, and left so, for any
after-manipulations profounder thinkers please.
Nevertheless, from the pabulum (often
exceedingly raw) supplied by these little
conversations, may be deduced a whole garden of
thought, worthy the attention of the most earnest
sage.

Whatever be the cause, the fact will hardly be
disputed that a taste for the supernatural has
greatly augmented of late among the educated
classes of society. It has, indeed, as might be
expected, abandoned its ancient form of bald
credulity. We neither believe in the ghost, nor
shoot at him. We require to know something
of his nature who walks uninvited into our
dwelling, and what may be his immediate business
there, but not with rudeness nor intolerance.
In a word, the indulgent spirit of the time is
the welcome child of progress. As every age
stamps itself upon the roll of time with the seal
of some grand discovery—as every successive
year reveals its half-suspected wonders—the
mind becomes less and less inclined to impose
limits upon that vast unexplored ocean, which,
like the natural horizon, seems to know no bound
but God—and man, as he grows wiser, grows
humbler.

To this improved feeling, and this better
discipline of reason, we are indebted for many
an interesting narrative which would else have
never passed the bounds of a family circle;
or, in doing so, would have at least been
carefully denuded of such corroboration as name,
place, and time afford. In the incidents
hereafter to be related, these have been supplied
without scruple, and without desire for any
greater reticence than the editor in his discretion
may impose. The circumstances of each
case have been verified with unusual care,
because another object than simple curiosity