On a Sunday after Christmas we paid a visit to an old keeper, who, on
his own confession, had not dined wisely on the good fare provided by
his wife on Christmas Day. Into our sympathetic ears he poured the
strangest tale of the dreams that he had dreamed. The first began
pleasantly enough, but ended in a nightmare. He was one of a party
shooting in his best wood, and he was ever in the hottest part of the
hottest corner, but each time he threw up his gun to shoot the crowds
of pheasants, the gun fell all in pieces. Never, he said, had he known
such a nightmare; though some of the other dreams that succeeded were
bad enough.
One was to the effect that on an important occasion all the birds of
his coverts utterly refused to rise and rocket, and when he pressed
them with beaters he found that one and all had turned into foxes.
This dream merged into one in which the foxes in his preserves were so
numerous that they outnumbered and overpowered the hounds, and then
attacked the Master, who was eaten. And there was a dream in which the
old keeper found that he had changed places with his employer, whom he
roundly abused for the mistakes he made in placing stops and managing
the beaters. The climax of this was the unkindest cut of all. The
gamekeeper dreamt that his employer, far from bearing him any ill-will
for the abuse, sent to his cottage on Christmas Eve a large tin of
tobacco, beneath the lid of which was a ten-pound note. This worthy
old man has had many queer dreams in his time--if we are to believe
him. He is ready to confess, for the sake of the story following the
confession, that he has never really mastered the art of shooting
driven partridges. But one night he dreamt that he had brought off the
most masterly right and left, and from far and near congratulations on
his brace poured upon him. Then he awoke to find himself in his own
familiar chair by the fireside, in the chill dawn of a winter morning,
and the local doctor, who was also a sportsman, was telling him how
there had arrived safely in the room upstairs a brace of fine young
keepers.
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