'tufters' rose for the fraction of a second only and needed a quick eye and concentrated shot.

Such was a typical day's small game shooting in Ganjam which is far from being the best district for wildfowling in India. I have often wondered why estate-owners who find pheasant-rearing too expensive do not let their shooting and spend the cold weather in the east. Not at Parlakimedi if they are going to make a business of it, for there is too little cover there and the jhils are too far apart. For a record bag one should go to Scinde or the jhils by the Ganges in Bengal, or for snipe to Upper Burma. For my own part I could not be happier anywhere with a gun than at Parlakimedi. It was the very desultoriness of the sport that fascinated me. For duck the more guns and the more drilling the better; but snipe shooting is the ideal sport for the solitary man who is happy enough to be in the open air, immune from all obligations save those of sport, which mean the observance of certain decencies and instinctive traditions in one's behaviour to the wild creatures. It is a kind of shooting that borrows a great deal of its attraction from locality. Discipline spoils it. The conditions are least congenial, I think, when there is a line of guns drawn up in a vista of dull, interminable, flat, featureless paddy fields, where one is tied to one's own furrow all day with nothing to distinguish the ground that has been shot over from the ground where one is to shoot, and apparently no reason why the birds should lie in one field more than another. But in recalling the happiest conditions my mind runs to that amphitheatre in the hills, the purple mountains all round, the marsh encroaching on the lake, and the initiative with oneself whether to potter deviously and explore or to work methodically over old ground. It is difficult to say wherein lies the greater charm, in remembering where birds have lain before and in putting them up, as one generally does, in the same place, or in indulging one's instinct for locality which is so seldom amiss after a season, and which can hazard to a nicety the conditions of bent, grass and mud the captious snipe prefers.

There was a kind of weed to be found in the discoloured ooze of the reedbeds by the Sita Sagram-particularly where they were seamed with a rusty iron deposit borne upwards by an underground spring-where one used to flush a wisp of snipe every few yards. I think the first time I realised the honest and legitimate advantage of sensation over all theories and gropings of the mind was one morning when I had discovered this rusty ooze and benefited

by it. I understood that one must feel life before one can conceive its meaning, and almost simultaneously with the discovery, perhaps a little before it, came a blind felicity of hand and eye by which I was able to convert every snipe that rose from the ground into a heap of inert feathers. I sat on a sunny bank and thought about it. I was a hedonist with a great pity for those who were not. It was early in the day, I had my record bag, and a horse to carry me to another jhil. Needless to say the physical inspiration has never returned.

It was a melancholy day when I put up my gun for the last time at Parlakimedi. It was the third week in March, and the last companies of wildfowl were thinking of going away. Before they came back I would be in a busy, civilised place, where one never saw a live duck unless it were inside a wire netting, or a snipe which was not draped in watercress and stuck on a piece of toast under the alias of Bécassine.' I had been shooting all the morning by the Rama Sagram, where the snipe had gathered for migration. You could put them up everywhere, in the jhil itself among reeds growing in three feet of water, in the green dew-fed horse gram, in the dry grass of the bunds where the paddy fields were baked as hard as macadam, even among the ashes of a burnt reed bed. A few duck were left on the jhil, and after the first shot a flock of spotbill rose up, and separated into twos and threes. They were unsettled with the heat, and off their guard, and a wedge came circling within range. One fine old drake with a gorgeous wing bar fell at my feet. It was the last gift of Parlakimedi, save those happy memories which are perennial.

EDMUND CANDLER.

OLD SANDY.

THIS is the story of a school on a hill. Neither the school nor the hill is Harrow. To be accurate, the hills are many and the school stands on a terrace, overlooking the shires.

It was not on the terrace that Old Sandy' stood that speechday afternoon. He was down at the foot of the grounds, where the Baths and Fives Courts are. He was looking up at the ivy-clad college buildings that have for background the purple goodness of the eternal hills-the hills up and down which generations of Belboro boys have climbed, hot-foot, Easter term after Easter term, in the silly season between the death of football and the birth of the game of games. And since he had lived with the school and the hills and the boys for thirty years these things were all in all to him. They were, in fact, Old Sandy's life.

Now he was going-going at the end of the term. The Council had no further use for him. They had told him so with much circumlocution and an infinity of compliments and thanks. Littera scripta manet he had quoted to himself when the neatly-turned letter had reached him. And though he had put his death-warrant into the fire he was justified of his proverb. Yes; the written words would remain-for the simple reason that they were written on his heart.

It was all the doing of the new Head. The old Head, who had loved Old Sandy and known him for almost the greatest asset in the school's success, had died in harness. The second master was a man of straw. The Council decided that the school needed new blood. They had sent to Eton for the best man Eton could spare. And they got him. He brought them strength. But with it he brought a certain impetuousness and a marked intolerance of age.

There was, on the face of it, something to be said for the Head's point of view. Old Sandy's methods were undeniably slow. It was only those upon whom they had been tried who knew them to be correspondingly sure. He would take a whole term to get his form through a dozen odes of Horace or five hundred lines of Sophocles, and the Head, who was himself a rusher, heard this

frowned, and made up his mind. He didn't realise that what Old Sandy taught, he taught more thoroughly than any master on the staff. How, too, could the Head discover in one short term that Old Sandy had the priceless gift of making his boys love their work, that they would have died for him, collectively a singly, just as need arose? Still less could the Head know of the hundreds of old boys who wrote still to the old man, of the sons they sent to the school because of him, of the affection with which men, running up against each other in clubs abroad, would mention his name. So the Head, who had the faults of his qualities, spoke straight to the Council, and the Council, saying to themselves 'This is a strong man,' did his bidding without question. Therefore, at the end of the term, Old Sandy would pass from Belboro life for good and all.

Out into the crisp upland air the bell-tower chimed its call; the flanking houses that studded the grounds downwards to right and left of the school buildings emptied themselves of boys; with them came parents top-hatted or bedecked; sisters walked proudly with brothers who pointed out this and that landmark, such and such a spot where Morrison had driven the straightest, hardest drive of the year, or Merriless had caught the Repton captain in the long field and won the great match.

Few

And this was to be no ordinary speech-day. For Lorrimer was coming back-General Lorrimer, the one really great soldier that the school had turned out in its just fifty-year-old life. Twentyfive years ago he had left, twenty-three of them he had been abroad, hardly one of them-through first luck, then persistence, and, finally, admitted capacity-he had not spent in some little or big campaign. Now he had a peerage and a dozen letters to follow his name. schools turn out more Blues than Belboro, none for their size win more scholarships or pass more men into the Government service. But Lorrimer was its only great General, the star-product of the place. The Head, who had a genius for judicious advertisement, had seized his opportunity. Lord Lorrimer had been pressed to come down. The invitation found him willing enough. By some happy chance (he had gone up for Woolwich at the end of his last term) he had never received a form prize which had been his due. Now he was to be given it. The thing was to be paragraphed and puffed. The result would be more boys next term. For all his impetuosity the Head had brains and flair. He meant to send the school along as never before.

Down on the iron seat, where the Baths and the Fives Courts are, Old Sandy heard the carillon. It was to him the knell that announced the death of his life's work. But though he was the only master in the school who never played games he was as sound a sportsman as any of them. He took his mortar-board from his knees, stroked out its dishevelled tassel, set it firmly on his head, got up, and adjusted his gown. Then, with set teeth, he began to walk across the grounds, over the junior and senior turfs (that are cut clean and green out of the hills), and up the steep bank beyond, till he reached the wide walk which leads to the terrace fronting the college steps. There-for a sudden stitch had stabbed his side-he paused a moment to draw breath. A running, panting boy of his own form caught him up. Old Sandy turned and smiled.

'Hullo, Symes!' he said. 'You're late. We're both late!' 'Yes, sir,' answered Symes breathlessly. Someone collared one of my bootlaces, and I've been running round the house hunting for a substitute for the last ten minutes. At last I had to get a piece of string and stick it in the ink and put it in my boot. But ' -he pulled at his right trouser as he spoke but I don't suppose anyone 'll notice it, sir.'

.

Old Sandy laughed. I don't suppose they will,' he conceded. They'll have something else to look at, Symes.'

'Oh, sir,' the boy panted,' has Lorrimer turned up yet? There was a rumour in the House just now that he wasn't coming.'

Old Sandy's lips pressed together tight and close, as if he fought with some strong emotion-and won. Then he half turned to his interlocutor:

'Lord Lorrimer has written to the Head to say that he's coming, Symes; and I think I know him well enough to answer for his keeping his word.'

The boy looked up quickly. An added respect for his master came with the knowledge that he had known his hero.

'Were you here with-was he in your form, sir? What was he like then? I mean, could you tell he was going to be a great man?

They were on the terrace now, the broad masters' steps before them, the low door of the boys' entrance away on the right. Old Sandy stopped dead and put an arm on Symes' shoulder.

'If it wasn't the end of term,' he said, 'I should ask the form to do me an essay on What is Greatness?" But as we break up to-morrow I'll answer your question. Lorrimer showed no more 52

VOL. XXVI.-—NO. 156, N.S.