He was the first to find out that two necklaces nearly alike bad found their way to the same pawnbroker's. He then, after attending to some little business of his own, sat down with Mrs. Percival's hand in his, and asked her, just as if he had a right, a question. "Was there any distinctive mark about Mrs. Clairville's necklace which you remember, dearest ?" said he, and he reinforced her intellectual faculties by kissing her pale, low, Egyptian brow. Mrs. Percival clapped her hands, and told him of the hidden clasp, the name Percival, the date, 1802. They looked at each other without speaking, and Sinclair tapped the left side of his waistcoat knowingly. "Let us go to Miss Griggs's," said he, and arm-in-arm they went, two happy lovers, toward that brownstone mansion, as if on air. Mrs. Clairville saw them coming along the pavement. She had heard of the engagement, and her throat filled up with bitterness. "I know how you feel, sir," said Lukes. "I was young once myself. Why, when I played" He attempted the gymnastic with the mustache, but failed, and the lovers bade him good-night for ever. A DAY'S OUTING WITH THE By H. W. DE LONG. THE post- bellum "Old Kentucky Home," while perhaps not quite so prodigal of entertainment as its predecessor of "befo' the wah," is still the centre of a quality of hospitality unknown in any other part of the country. Many of the old estates, with manor-house and negro quarters intact, may still be found all through the State, peopled by representative Kentuckians, in whom the old chivalrous instincts are as strong as when "I wonder what story they have trumped up about the their fathers counted their bondmen by the score and disnecklace?" said she to Miss Griggs. "I don't know. Some falsehood, you may be sure." "So glad to see you," said she to Mrs. Percival. "Allow me to congratulate you. The actress has disgorged. She has sent home my necklace." "Stop a moment, Mrs. Clairville," said Sinclair; "I do not believe that she has. Was there any secret mark about your necklace, let us inquire? What, for instance, was Mr. Clairville's great-grandmother's name ?" "Percival," said Miss Griggs. "The Percivals have had great love for that necklace-hem!" "What year was she in Paris ?” "Eighteen hundred and two," said Miss Griggs, who had questioned the late Clairville more than his wife had ever done. pensed their largesses with all the prodigality of a feudal baron. In nearly every case these fine old mansions will be found located back from the highway or pike, in a grove of forest trees, with a winding road, barred possibly by two or three gates leading up to the friendly-looking portico. To get the entrée to one of these Blue-grass demesnes is to leave all care behind and rest content in the thought that one is welcome for a year and a day. It was a great relief to me, after a long, tedious ride from my Northern home, to be set down at the door of one of these old manor-houses, one crisp November evening, and to have my welcome accentuated by the factbrought out by a long correspondence-that a kinship, although far removed, existed between the inmates and Sinclair took a little box from his waistcoat-pocket, myself. It was like coming home, and the sweet word and gave it to Miss Griggs. "This was deposited at a pawnbroker's by your maid, Marie. Press a spring under the second plaque and tell me what you read." Mrs. Griggs and Mrs. Clairville turned red, pale, purple. They did so, and read : "Percival, 1802." "That is the necklace!" said Mrs. Clairville, hastily. "I recognize the little curly Cupid with one eye out." "I don't know yet!" said Miss Griggs. "Bring me the other necklace." It was brought, and differed in some unimportant particulars; there was certainly no secret clasp, no legend, no name, no date. That necklace was a mystery. "This story will go with the charge of kleptomania -hey!" said Sinclair, forgetting his manners. "Now, ladies, apologize to my wife that is to be!" "I am sure we are not to blame !" said Miss Griggs. "Dear! dear! how much better this is than writing plays!" said Sinclair, pressing Mrs. Percival's arm to his side, as he walked away in the sunset. She looked very happy and very quiet. "cousin" never sounded sweeter to my ears than it did that night. The prime object of my visit to Kentucky was to beat the quail covers about Cousin Bob's plantation in company with himself and another cousin from the interior of the State, whom we will call Al. I had come prepared to do great execution among the birds, and the bottom of my trunk had been in constant jeopardy during my trip, due to the great load of gun-shells and other sporting paraphernalia packed therein. After supper, as we sat about the genial grate with pipes well going, Bob observed: "You have struck an excellent time for partridges, Cousin H. They are more plenty this season than I have known them to be for several years. Why, there are no less than six bevies using' now within a thousand yards of the house." "That is indeed good news," I answered; "for although I have owned and handled guns all my life, I have never yet been where I could try my skill to any extent on this finest of American game birds." "You will find they will tax your skill pretty tho"A partridge or "It is a dreadful thing to be accused of stealing," said roughly too," spoke up Al, smiling. she, looking up in his face with her black eyes. "Yes, and how much worse it is to be guilty! I charge you, not with petty larceny of a necklace, but with the grand larceny of me and my business connection. Just think, you have stolen a playwright! and that is worse, dear, even than stealing plays!" 'quail,' as you say, under full headway, is a mark requiring nerve and judgment to bring to grass, and to have a bevy rise suddenly all about you is, you will find, one of the most puzzling things in all your shooting experience." "I am afraid I will make rather a poor showing with "Let us go and see my poor old men at the One- Bob White' after my limited practice on squirrels and armed Tramps,'" said Mrs. Percival. Gilbert and Lukes were delighted with the visit, and with their connection with the two necklaces. an occasional grouse or woodcock at home," I remarked; but Bob comforted me by saying that "if I had shot grouse in cover I could certainly shoot quail in the open. "WHEN I CAME TO MYSELF I FOUND I WAS STANDING OPENMOUTHED, WITH MY UNDISCHARGED GUN IN MY HANDS." And day after to-morrow," he continued, "is Thanksgiving Day, and although we Kentuckians don't hold that festival in quite so great veneration as you Northerners do, still we will celebrate it by a grand field-day, and see what we can do with the birds." So when, soon afterward, we separated for the night, it was decided that the next day should be devoted to looking about the plantation and getting acquainted, and the day following should be given up to field sports. Looking about the place proved a most enjoyable occupation to me. In place of the little forty and fifty acre farms to which I had been accustomed, here was a great estate of more than a thousand acres, beautifully rolling and well watered. Hundreds of horses, cattle and sheep were grazing on the delicious blue-grass that, in spite of the lateness of the season, was still lush and abundant. In fact, there are few days, even in midwinter, when this grass is not accessible to stock, and when found is always nutritious. There is also a peculiar element in the water of this favored region that, combined with the herbage, makes the Blue-grass Country of Kentucky the 'place, par exc lence, for the breeding and development of fine stock. You see it cropping out even in ordinary farm animals, a wonderful showing of blood, bone and muscle marking the Kentucky stock distinctively, and making this delectable land the centre of all that is good in American thoroughbreds. So the day passed delightfully away, and the evening being profitably spent in overhauling shooting-togs and getting ready for an early start on the morrow, I retired with the firm conviction that of the delights of Kentucky plantation life, the half had never been told. Thanksgiving Day dawned slowly on my sleeping senses through the medium of Young Jim, a little darky, of perhaps fifteen Summers, who came in my room shortly after daylight to start the fire in my grate. Jim had constituted himself a sort of self-appointed bodyguard, and attached himself to my person with a tenacious fidelity that threatened a speedy depletion of my small change, and as he squatted before the grate, blowing away at the refractory kindlings, I ventured a Good-morning, Jim." 66 "Good-morning, Marse H." How queer it sounds to Northern ears to be called "Marse"! "What sort of a day will this be for quail-shooting, Jim ?" "First-rate, I should say; sorter cloudy-like and cold. Reckon de birds 'ill lay well to de dogs." Then, with beaming countenance : "Marse Bob says as how I kin go 'long to hold de hosses and open de gates." 66 'Why, we don't go horseback, do we, Jim ?" "Sartain we do, sah; git a heap mo' birds dat way. All de gen'lemen down dis yer way allus goes arter partridges a-horseback." And Young Jim having gotten the bituminous well blazing, slid out of the room. I had never Here was food for reflection, indeed! ridden a horse in my life, and the idea of mounting one of those active, clean-limbed thoroughbreds that I had seen in Bob's stables the day before was simply appalling. So, at breakfast, I frankly owned that I was no horseman, and mildly suggested that we walk. The laugh that rippled round the board, and was reflected in broad grins by the dusky retainers who served our coffee and waffles, was not at all cheering to me, so I resolved to ride or die, which resolution was strengthened by my cousin's assurance that "the steed selected for me was a quiet old pacer, with a gait like a rockingchair, and a back so broad and stable that to fall therefrom was impossible." It was fully eight o'clock when we buckled on our cartridge-belts and mounted our horses. My mountOld Jane-certainly did not look at all vicious, and, as I settled into the saddle and adjusted my feet carefully in the stirrups, it did not seem such a terrible thing after all, and as we moved slowly away, I flattered myself that I did not cut so bad an equestrian figure as I had anticipated; but as we passed the negro quarters, there appeared a long row of grinning faces watching gleefully the Northern man who didn't know how to ride a horse. The news had spread, and I was the cynosure of all eyes; and, although I held the reins jauntily in my left hand, and carried my gun across the saddle-horn in true cavalry style, it was quite a relief to leave the house behind and start across country toward the quail-grounds. The day was all that could be desired, light fleecy | fields are the rule, the method adopted is to spread as clouds overhung the sky, and cushions of mist lay along the swales. That exhilarating, indescribable Autumn feeling, that exists nowhere but in America, pervaded everything, and we chatted and smoked as careless and much as possible across the field, and ride slowly, where practicable, up-wind. A pair of good dogs, by ranging before each hunter in turn, will beat every inch of ground, and by moving up-wind, the scent of the game statues, are pointing the game. With guns at "ready," the sportsmen gradually approach, moving up step by step, taking advantageous positions on different sides of the dogs. Eyes are strained for the first flutter of a feather, hearts are thumping with suppressed excitement, fingers are lightly pressing the sensitive triggers. The dogs are reached and passed-still no sign of game. "They lie like rocks this morning," says one of the men. "Watch out now. I'll kick them up." Advancing rapidly two or three paces, he administers a vigorous kick to a thick tussock of grass, when, "burrburr-burr," the bevy springs into the air, and away they go like bullets, and, as the "boom boom" of the breechloaders rend the morning air, the dogs drop to shot, and the survivors are marked down in a field a quarter of a mile away. Dead birds are then retrieved, horses mounted, the dogs "hied on " once more, and the cavalcade moves forward to repeat the same tactics. So it was with our Thanksgiving Day party. Crossing a great pasture lot, we had entered a field of wheat stubble, through which ran a drain, along the borders of which there was quite a growth of briers. "I think we will find birds here," said Bob; "and you, H., ride down the left of the drain, and you, Al, keep further down the field. I will cross over and go down on the right. Keep Young Jim with you to hold your horses; mine will stand anywhere. Hie on, dogs!" And off we went, the dogs bounding in every direction, with Young Jim gleefully bringing up the rear. More than half the field was traversed without a sign of game. The dogs had crossed the ditch and were hidden from view by the undergrowth. Suddenly Bob called out: "There you are, boys! Hurry up! Here's a sight for you!" Al galloped in at once. Young Jim took the horses, and jumping down, we plunged across the drain, and parting the brush, what a picture there was to gladden a sportsman's eye! Old Scott had suddenly, without warning, struck a hot scent, not a rod from the ditch and near a little tangle of briers and jimson-weed, and true to his instinct, had stopped as if frozen in his tracks. With muzzle extended and body crouching, he stood with quivering lip and rigid stern, like a canine statue, restrained from leaping in upon the game, that seemed to be just before him, by that careful element of breeding and training that makes a thoroughbred sporting dog a wonder to the novice. But as if to heighten the picture and make it doubly beautiful, Scott's companion, Frank, although some twenty yards away, where but a faint scent of the game could have possibly reached him, was backing the old dog by sight, and stood there as immovable as though the subtle taint were directly in his nostrils. But I was allowed scant time to dwell on the picture. "Steady, dogs!" came Bob's voice, and, "Get ready, boys! they are right in front of Old Scott's nose. Careful where you shoot now. Al, you take the left, and you, H., the centre, and I'll take the right when they get up.' And so we walked slowly along toward the dogs, expect ing every second the birds would take wing. But as we advanced, and nothing was seen to indicate the proximity of game but the rigid pointers, I must confess to an attack of genuine buck fever. It came on very suddenly, and before I knew it I was shaking like a man in an ague, while the muzzle of my gun began gyrating in my nerveless hands in a most erratic and peculiar manner. In spite of my utmost efforts to control myself, the fever continued, and was at its height when the bevy, eighteen strong, burred into the air, and after leaving three of their number on the grass, the fruit of my companions' guns, flew into a neighboring hemp-field and dropped in a thicket at its further border. When I came to myself I found I was standing open-mouthed, with my undischarged gun in my hands, gazing stupidly in the direction of the vanished quail, while Bob and Al were making the air ring with laughter. "A clear case of buck fever, Cousin H.," said the latter, as he took a fine cock quail from Frank's mouth and put it in his game-pocket. “Well, never mind," chimed in Bob, good-naturedly. "I have been there myself, and know just how you felt. Put down your hammers and we will try 'em again. I have them marked down to a yard in yonder hemp-field, and you will soon have a chance to retrieve your fòrtunes." I said nothing, but as I got into my saddle I resolved to keep my head the next time, or lay by my gun as an implement with which I had no business. In a few moments we neared the place where the birds had dropped, and Frank made the first point, followed immediately by Old Scott, who struck another forty yards away. "They have scattered," sang out Bob, as he tumbled from the saddle. "You tend to Frank, H., and you, Al, come with me. We will have some sport now, sure. Take the horses back, Jim, and look sharp." "Now for it," I thought, as I stepped toward the young dog, who was holding his point like a veteran. "No buck fever this time, my boy. Remember the words of the Iron Duke, 'The eyes of the world are upon you,' and do your best." I don't know whether it was this soliloquizing or not that braced me up, but when the bird, a fine old cock, arose at thirty yards, I covered him as coolly as though shooting at a mark, and as my finger pressed the trigger I saw him cringe and roll over amidst a little cloud of feathers, killed clean and artistically. "Good enough," called out Al, from his position on my right, and the next moment he made a clean miss on a quail that got up before Scott, while Bob brought down another that arose at the sound of Al's gun. Then we beat the ground carefully, and although we knew positively that fifteen quail had alighted directly on the spot over which the dogs were quartering, we could only find one more bird, that Al gathered in. The rest had undoubtedly scattered, and later would come together again, but rather than wait for them we started for other ground, that had been recommended by a neighboring planter as "first-rate using' ground for partridges." A half-hour's ride over a beautiful rolling country brought us to the border of this territory, and finding a cool spring, with an overhanging haw-tree, we decided to lunch, and rest an hour before resuming our sport. Young Jim, after tethering the horses, brought the lunch wallet, and we fared sumptuously on middling bacon and cold cornbread, washed down with hearty potations from the spring. Neither was Young Jim or the dogs forgotten, but it was share and share alike. Lunch over, we smoked our cigars in quiet luxury, discussing meanwhile the morning's work, and resolving to do better on the new ground. Then the conversation took a retrospective turn, bringing up squarely to those troublous times of '61-'65, and Al, who had been one of "Morgan's men," recounted anecdotes of personal experience so interesting that we almost forgot our mission, and were only brought to ourselves by Bob suddenly exclaiming, as he looked at his watch : "Come, come, Al! clap a stopper on your war article, to be continued to-night before the grate. It's half-past | one, looks like rain, Thanksgiving dinner at four, and a lot of birds to bag during the interval. To horse, my brave boys, and away!'" We had beaten about half way through a very promising-looking grass lot, when the rain, that had been threatening for the last hour, began to come down in a fine drizzle, that was very discouraging, and we had about decided to give up and go home, when both dogs pointed at once in a corner of the worm fence. What are a wet jacket and dripping skies when your dogs are standing on game? Perish the sportsman in whose make-up the element of sugar enters so largely that fear of dissolution follows the first drop of rain and immediate shelter is a necessity. Such is not fit to woo nature through the medium of the gun and rod, but shines far better at the trap and in the shooting-gallery. So long as any possibility of raising a feather remains the born sportsman will stick to the heath. Come rain, come snow, come anything that's bad, he will plod after the dogs all day, and if, as a reward for his faithfulness, the good Diana, as the night comes down, gives him a clean right and left at a brace of birds that he drops artistically, he will pick them up with a joyful heart, and trudge home through the gloaming feeling that the day has been a red-letter one indeed. an irregular row, a hundred yards in extent, with Al and us. And, as he spoke, a quail jumped up from under his feet, almost grazing his gun as it took wing. "Bang!" Down it came at ten yards, badly riddled. Whirr ! up went the bird before Scott, and down it came to Al's right barrel. Still Old Scott held his point. "There's another over there, Cousin H.; walk him up." Nothing loath, I stepped in, and up he went, and down he came again as my twelve-bore sang out mightily. Still the old dog stood stanch as ever, and up went another, that I missed beautifully, and not until then did the pointer move on, and then as carefully and gingerly as a cat on a sparrow. There were more birds ahead of him, sure, and as he drew on and pointed, followed by his companion, we would walk up the birds and cut them down right and left. For a full half-hour we enjoyed most glorious sport, missing some, but killing more, and when the last remnant of the two harassed bevies disappeared in a neighboring thicket we counted up thirty-seven fire birds as the result of our day's sport, and declared our Dropping to the ground, we started up the little hilock, at the crest of which the dogs were standing. I think it must have been the snapping of the guns as we closed them, after slipping in the shells, that caused the young dog Frank, at this juncture, to do a most unsportsmanlike thing, for no sooner had we closed our pieces than the impetuous fellow broke his point and leaped directly into the midst of the bevy, putting them to flight, and so exciting Old Scott that he also lost his head, and, like Jill of the nursery rhyme, "came tum-selves "satisfied.” bling after," and the rout was complete. We were all taken by surprise, and, although we poured in six barrels, the range was so long and the sight so hurried, that only one bird came to grass. Rushing to the top of the knoll, we could see the dogs careering over the plain in hot pursuit, flushing another bevy at the edge of the field, and stopping only, in spite of Bob's halloas, when an eight-rail fence presented an impassable barrier. The first bevy was marked down on the side of a small hill in the next field, and the second, strange to say, followed suit and settled exactly in the same place, making a pack of more than fifty partridges in a clear, open spot where there would be no impediment to perfect shooting. "Come in here, you beggars!" shouted Bob, as the damp, crestfallen pointers, with drooping sterns and a general air of having put their foot in it, made their way toward us. "You knew better, you rascals, than to flush those birds. Take that! and that!" and the dogwhip cracked smartly. "Now to heel, and don't let us have any more such foolishness! And back they slunk, keeping their eyes on their master, although Bob's rating they well knew was sharper with the tongue than the whip. "Now, boys," said Bob, "there are fifty quail packed on that hillside, and, if we work it right, we will have some sport worthy the name, in spite of the rain. I have an idea that the birds will lie well in the wet grass -they often do-and we will get the benefit of single shots, which means more than if they all rise in a huddle. Now let us get the dogs over the fence, and see what we can do." So we hoisted the pointers over, and, with many a caution to "go careful," they began beating toward the hillside where we had marked our birds. Spreading out in "Not a bad showing, indeed !" said Bob, as he tied the last russet beauty on the string, and hung the heavy bunch across his saddle-bow. "A very good Thanksgiving Day's work, eh, Cousin H.? And now for home as soon as possible. I am wet to the skin. You, H., take Young Jim behind you, as you have the largest horse, and we will soon have the odor of that Thanksgiving dinner in our nostrils.” So away we went: the Kentuckians on their thoroughbreds on either side, and Young Jim and I on Old Jane in the centre. My mount was old, but she was ambitious, and as the younger horses sped along, she, not wishing to be outdone, strained every nerve to keep up, and I had an excellent opportunity of testing that "rocking-chair gait " that Bob spoke about at breakfast. We had not gone far before I became thoroughly convinced that the rockers must be broken, or, at least, sadly out of repair, for I never received such a jouncing in my life. But not wishing to interfere with the movements of the procession, I handed my gun to Young Jim, and bent all my energies to the difficult task of holding on, much to the amusement of my partners, who, instead of reining in as I suggested, only went the harder; while Young Jim added impulse to my steed by digging his long heels into her ribs, singing the while : "I went to de ribber and I couldn't git across, And so, like the heroes of that famous ride from Aix to Ghent, Al galloped, Bob galloped, we galloped all three, until at last, to my weary eyes arose the grateful via on of the walls of the old manor-house shining friendly through the rain, and as we dismounted at the door, nd |