They always took every possible precaution at the beginning of an enterprise.

They did not ride straight home.

Three miles out of Rowington was a small clump of trees on a hill.

At the foot of the hill, a hundred yards below the clump, lay Great Deeping wood, acre upon acre.

It had lately passed, along with the rest of the Great Deeping estate, into the hands of Mr.D'Arcy Rosenheimer, a pudding-faced, but stanch young Briton of the old Pomeranian strain.
He was not loved in the county, even by landed proprietors of less modern stocks, for, though he cherished the laudable ambition of having the finest pheasant shoot in England, and was on the way to realize it, he did not invite his neighbors to help shoot them.