'It must be nearly nine o'clock. Hist! here they are."

Three dark bodies shot into view against the sky, disappeared for a moment against the dark background of the opposite bank, and then made three distinct splashes in the water.

Bang! bang! went the guns, and two of the ducks lay on their backs quite dead. The other rose, but was dropped before he had got far. Nero easily and quickly retrieved all three, and scarcely had he done so ere he had to go into the cold water again for a fourth duck, which came by itself, and hovered for a second right over us,

66 I say, can't we stop this dog shaking himself in the boat? I shall be wet through, directly."

"No; he can't do without his shake. Bear it philos-missed, by Jupiter!"

He had fired at a duck which was passing overhead and behind him, and therefore had a very good chance of getting off unhurt.

Hark! hark! I believe that was the call of wild geese. My man says he saw some on the hills. There! look! don't you see them, over the trees?"

I certainly thought I saw some large dark bodies passing at a great distance. They might have been wild geese, but they did not come close enough to

enable us to decide the point. A considerable time elapsed without the appearance of any more ducks. Then a flock of curlews passed overhead, at a very great height, making the air resound with their cries. A heron flapped along down the river, just above the surface of the water, evidently looking out for a place to settle. Then a couple of teal came within shot, but one only was secured. Then another duck, and then it really seemed as if no more were coming. It must be remembered that one cannot obtain a very large bag at this sort of sport, except on preserved waters, and we considered we had done very well indeed when three more wild ducks were added to the heap in the bottom of the boat-which certainly had not much right to the name of "bag" (although in sporting parlance it would be called so), seeing that there was nothing in the shape of a bag anywhere near.

It was now getting late, the cherry brandy was nearly finished, and the cold was every minute becoming more unbearable. Still, we did not like to leave the spot while there was a chance of any more ducks coming. The chance was but slight, as it was so late, but it wanted only a quarter of an hour to twelve o'clock, and we resolved to see the old year out and the new year in before we left.

Even to the most thoughtless it is a solemn time

when the old year passes away, with its load of varied experience of joy or sorrow, and the new year comes in, fresh and unsullied, waiting for us to use it as we will. Don't be afraid, dear reader, that I am going to moralize. I write now more to amuse than to instruct, and serious thoughts are out of place; but is it to be wondered at that we neither of us spoke the while the last moments of the old year died away in the silence and stillness of the starlit night? The thoughts of each were busy with his own concerns, and he forebore to interrupt the other. There was a soughing of the water in the eddies, a sighing of the wind over the rushes, a wailing of curlews in the upper sky, and the new year was upon us.

"A happy new year to you, old man! We had better be going home."

May each year be a happy new year to all honest men and good sportsmen !

X.

A DOG HUNT ON THE BERWYNS THANKS to the columns of the sporting papers, every Englishman, whatever his occupation, is sufficiently familiar with the details of fox-hunting and the other kinds of hunting usually practised in merry England ; but few, I fancy, have either seen or heard of a doghunt. It has fallen to my lot to participate in such a hunt-one, too, which was quite as exciting as a wolfhunt must have been in the olden time, or as that most glorious of sports, otter-hunting, is now. Imagine to yourself a three days' chase after a fierce and savage dog, a confirmed sheep-worrier, and that in the midst of the picturesque ruggedness and grandeur of the Welsh hills.

Some three or four miles east from Bala, the Berwyn mountains raise their heathery summits in the midst