They had passed the rabbit-brier country scathless, with two black mallard, a jack-snipe, and a rabbit to the credit of their score, and were now advancing through that dimly lit enchanted land of tall grey alders where, in the sudden twilight of the leaves, woodcock after woodcock fluttered upward twittering, only to stop and drop, transformed at the vicious crack of Siward's gun to fluffy balls of feather whirling earthward from mid-air.
Sagamore came galloping back with a soft, unsoiled mass of chestnut and brown feathers in his mouth.

Siward took the dead cock, passed it back to the keeper who followed them, patted the beautiful eager dog and signalled him forward once more.
"You should have fired that time," he said to Sylvia--"that is, if you care to kill anything." "But I don't seem to be able to," she said.

"It isn't a bit like shooting at clay targets.

The twittering whirr takes me by surprise--it's all so charmingly sudden--and my heart seems to stop in one beat, and I look and look and then--whisk! the woodcock is gone, leaving me breathless--" Her voice ceased; the white setter, cutting up his ground ahead, had stopped, rigid, one leg raised, jaws quivering and locking alternately.
"Isn't that a stunning picture!" said Siward in a low voice.

"What a beauty he is--like a statue in white and blue-veined marble.