carries a loaded gun over ice or frozen snow when the surface is slippery as it was then. Before starting, the load had been fired off, the muzzle plugged with a wad of tow, and the lock carefully bound round with a handkerchief.

At last the great field of forty acres, for which they were bound, was safely reached. Like the rest of the fields in that locality, it was separated from the neighbouring ones by a deep ditch, deep enough to hide a man, and a thick hedge. Looking through the branches of the hedge close to the gate of the field, they saw the gulls and crows, both dun and carrion, gorging themselves with fish. Den had no wish to shoot, he was absorbed in watching them feed. Four cobs were walking and flapping from one heap to another, digging and cackling. The other gulls, the common, and the black-headed in its winter plumage, the red-legged gull of the marshes, covered the field, or rather were spread over it in small companies, all busy at the fish, apparently filled with the same idea that they had to eat as much fish as was possible in a given time. The great cobs did not confine themselves to that one field; they visited the others and came back

again, but not near the hedge-they flew only over the middle part of the field. The smaller gulls did not wander, nor did they take the same precaution as their larger relatives.

So it went on from day to day. The birds left the fields for the flats as each evening drew near; each morning they brought more birds with them, and, finding that they were not molested, the whole crowd of crows and gulls grew bolder and more impudent, until the farmer noticed how much smaller his fish-heaps were growing-some of them, in fact, having nearly vanished. "Poor things!" said he, 'they must be most desprit hungry-there ain't no doubt on that pint; but I raly don't see as I can afford to give 'em three waggin-loads o' fish ; and he summoned his head carter, who was a good shot, handed him the old "raker" from over the chimneypiece, gave him a flask of the best sporting powder and some duck-shot, and bade him "wake 'em up a bit." The old fellow not only waked 'em all up, but he sent a good number of them to sleep again faster than was their wont. He got into the dry deep ditch, with a pair of old worsted stockings drawn over his boots to prevent the sound of the

crunching in of the frozen snow, and fired on the birds. Some of these simply flew up from where their dead companions lay, to pitch in another part of the field, in order to attack the fish there. Then the man slipped round to that side to fire from the ditch again; and so the game went on for some time. When he picked up his birds, he had more than he could stand under. The black-backs or cobs were sold to the local bird-stuffers, the others had their wings cut off for using as dusters and hearth-sweepers. Our folks used to find the wings. of water-birds very handy for those purposes. The feathers are "springy"; they were plucked off the birds next, and used for stuffing cushions, not for pillows as I said before, they were supposed to have the property of chasing sleep away. Then the carcases were given to the farm hands; and as food was scarce that hard winter, they were glad, after burying them in the ground for a few days in order to rid them of their fishy taste, to feed their large families on them.

The last time Den visited that field during the hard frost was in the afternoon, just as the gulls were leaving it for the flats. As he watched them

take flight, he saw a small cloud of birds coming up from the coast: they were golden plovers. "That's the best thing I have seen for many a day," said an old friend who was with him, an experienced shot. "The birds are moving from the coast, and the weather is about to break." Next morning a thaw set in, and it continued, ending one of the bitterest winters known for years.

There has been a great deal of drivelling nonsense written about the unerring instinct of birds. We have seen it often at fault ourselves: birds, like human beings, get out of their reckoning at times. We have known the black geese, when the fog has hung low down over the sea, float in with the tide close to shore; and then our shore - shooters had their time, and flash after flash sounded, and the reports rolled for miles along the shore. The spaniels were busy enough then bringing the birds in: they had lost themselves in the thick curtain of fog that enveloped them. And wary though those fowl are as a rule, we have seen geese and ducks-to say nothing of the divers and gulls-floating in and out among the line of battleships that lay at anchor, ready to pick up anything eatable that might be