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Updated: June 4, 2025
The old cock-pheasant slid across the "ride" after a bit, low as a crouching rat. He had no business there this day. His mind was still alert with suspicion. Moreover, his father had been a cunning old cock who had managed, by ways that were dark, to keep out of the game-bag for years, too. The taint, as Gaiters would have called it, had been passed on to him.
The stoat, plus a new carmine decoration for gallantry, remembered an urgent appointment down a rat-hole, and kept it. Perhaps it was a young stoat, and had not learnt that there are at least four degrees of cock-pheasant, namely, young and brainless, adult and brave, old and brave and cunning, and old and decrepit; but the last stage is a rare bird.
The old cock-pheasant, too, erect as an armored warrior, unseen just within the covert, stood promptly at gaze. Then, in no more time than one would take to inhale one puff from a cigarette, the fields were empty stark, cold, and deserted in the eye of the morning sun. The birds had not so much gone, exactly, as simply faded out dissolved, as a picture may at a cinema-show.
She stood as though frozen; clink, clink came the distant sound. Then all was still. But presently she saw a scared cock-pheasant, crouching low with flattened neck outstretched, run like a huge rat through the hazel growth, out across the meadow. She remained motionless, scarcely daring to draw her breath.
Sir ROGER'S back was no sooner turned, but honest Will began to tell me of a large cock-pheasant that he had sprung in one of the neighbouring woods, with two or three other adventures of the same nature.
A flock of wood-pigeons circled round in the moonlight and flew back into the frees. Then a cock-pheasant crowed. Mordaunt stopped in the gloom where a nut-bush hung over the gate of a ride. Somebody had disturbed the birds; one could trust the pigeons to give the alarm when an enemy was about.
It is they who make the necessary arrangements, and provide the pheasants that appear in the recess; which signify that the hanna-moko, like the cock-pheasant, will always jealously guard his charmer, who, like the shy hen-bird, will readily respond to the call of her mate.
And when she had answered yes, he continued: "It was a mating as birds mate, but mating was it, and holy fathers and Master Devil Doltaire can't change it till cock-pheasant Moray come rocketing to 's grave. They would have hanged me for my part in it, but I repent not, for they have wickedly hunted this little lady." "I weep with her," said Jean's wife. "Ay, ay, weep on, Babette," he answered.
Suddenly his reverie was interrupted by the discharge of a gun in the field adjoining the hedge along which he was passing, and the boisterous whirring of a great cock-pheasant over his head, which caused his horse to start and stop short, and to nearly pitch Jorrocks over his head.
This is not very complimentary, perhaps, to a gentleman attired in a gorgeous uniform as heretofore set out, but true; and lucky for him, too, to have at once a uniform of unquestioned splendor and one which would melt into its surroundings. They, the men, did not see him; but he, the old cock-pheasant, saw them right enough. He opened one eye, and stared at them through that.
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