"FOWL PLAY."

MY FIRST NIGHT UNDER CANVAS.

ITHIN the pleasant shadow of the Malvern Hills, a few weeks ago, was encamped the county battalion of a local force of volunteers. It was a fine sunny day when I marched in as first lieutenant of a crack corps; and everything seemed favourable to a pleasant inauguration of my new experience. At 10:30 I parted with a couple of agreeable guests, and then set about putting my tent in order. I unrolled the regulation blankets, I brought out my two linen sheets which wifely regard for my comfort had contributed to my baggage, I made my bed, hung my lantern on the pole, donned my night-shirt, and then, enveloped in an ample cloak, stepped outside to smoke a last cheroot and take leave of exterior objects.

The moon was shining gloriously upon the tented field, throwing into shadow the graceful outline of hill in rear, and edging in the plain with a misty band of beauty. By midnight the camp was quiet. The review being fixed for the next day, everybody seemed inclined to prepare for extra labour by extra sleep. With the tramp of a distant sentinel in my ear, and the drowsy hum of voices from a more distant tent, I entered my canvas house. I turned down my sheets, I decapitated and slew in various ways forty earwigs, and then laid me down to rest. I tried very hard to believe that I was enjoying myself. The close atmosphere of the tent and the effect of a heavy drill during the day soon lulled me into a gentle doze, in which I continued more or less pleasantly for at least two hours, when my slumbers were strangely disturbed.

Muttered whispers came in through the half-strapped entrance of my tent. Then some monstrous living thing forced its way in and

"Stood at the foot of my truckle bed,

Painfully nodding its weary head."

A brandy-and-sodaish laugh was all I heard outside, followed by retreating footsteps. Wide awake now, I sat up in bed, and a gleam

of moonlight fell upon the nodding head of a winged monster that stood by me like a drunken sentinel,

"And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each canvas curtain

Thrilled me-filled me with fantastic terror never felt before."

Stepping gently to the ground I drew my sword and struck a light, in momentary fear that the wretched bird would begin to fly about and struggle to escape. It did nothing, however, but stand solemnly by my bed and nod.

It was, indeed, a remarkable sight in the moonlight, this winged monster with the palsied neck; stranger still by lantern-light a few minutes afterwards. We must have made an odd picture, that same bird and I, as we stood there looking at each other; the very antithesis to Poe and his Raven. My midnight visitor was a turkey, and a very melancholy turkey too. I traced a gleam of extreme sadness in his eye as he winked and blinked in the lantern light. He seemed mutely to apologise for the idiots who had deposited him there, and he suffered me to dress in peace, although he must have seen that I was a little angered at his unwarrantable intrusion.

"I think I know the gentleman who brought you here," I said. "I shall take you back to your friend again."

The turkey shook his head in mild expostulation, as much as to say, "Let me go home to my family on the common; I came not here of my own free will."

"I shall take you to Ensign Mildew's tent," I repeated.

The turkey acknowledged my remark with a deprecatory nod.

"I shall, indeed, sir: don't look at me in that way.”

Thereupon my visitor said "Goggle-goggle," in a faint apologetic sort of way, and fluttered his wings.

"Do, if you dare! Move but an inch, flutter but another feather, and thou'rt a dead bird," I said, raising my glittering weapon. The bird stood still, and winked and blinked insanely in the gleams of the brightening lantern.

"You deserve instant decapitation for permitting that great plethoric Ensign to capture you. Why came you so near our tents? Know ye not that you and your whole race, and your companions, the cackling geese and ducks of this common, are all intended for our daily mess? A turkey with any brains would avoid such dangerous ground."

The poor bird seemed heartily ashamed of his position, and more so when I roused up a comrade in the next tent to join me in the painful expedition of "passing him on."

I could not help laughing (though it seemed to pain the bird much that I should sneer at him so) when my comrade, half-dressed, his shirt fluttering in the breeze, took up the unhappy turkey in his arms.

"To the left face," I said, "forward!" And on we marched to the tent of my charming friend, whose notions of volunteering are of such a humorous, if not military, character.

"Halt," I commanded here;

No sooner said than done.

"unbuckle tent."

"Hi, hollo, what's that?" exclaimed the jaunty occupant.

"Your bird come home to roost," I said; and with that my comrade with the fluttering shirt flopped the goggling turkey in upon the funny gentleman, under whose numerous curses we beat a hasty

retreat.

Returning to my quarters, I met an artilleryman half clad,—a wanderer amongst the tents. I deemed it right to question him.

"There are more turkeys abroad to-night than one," said the bluff sergeant-major; "but, by Jove, if I could lay my hand upon the man who disturbed me, I'd make him remember turkey all his life." "Relate your adventure, sir," I commanded.

"I was fast asleep," said the sergeant-major, "when something fell upon my face, something soft and prickly. Confound it,' I said, 'there goes my busby.' I thought it had fallen from the pole, and rolled upon me. I put out my hand to reach it, and found it alive! I yelled ten thousand murders. 'What's the row?' sang out my comrade. For heaven's sake, strike a light,' I said; there's something dreadfully wrong here.' Then I yelled again, for I was terrified; the devil himself could not have frightened me more. And when we got a light, there stood an infernal great cock-turkey staring at us."

After a hearty laugh that startled more than one sleeper, I sought my couch once more, to find it again occupied by sundry aldermaniclooking earwigs. Ejecting these, I folded my cloak about me, laid my sword by the bed in case of another attack from without, and slept the fitful sleep of all first nights in camp, awaking for good at last, cold and damp and earwiggy.

THE SCIENCE OF CROQUET.

PART II.

AVING in a previous part considered how to play the various strokes which present themselves at the game of croquet, it remains to discuss what stroke to play for. This is not so easy a matter as at first sight appears.

We are met with a difficulty on the very threshold. There are several ways of playing the first stroke of a game, notably two, and neither of them is to our mind satisfactory. One mode is to play to go through the first hoop, and failing to make it, to take up the ball, and on the turn of that ball coming round again, to play at the hoop as before, and so on until it is run at one stroke. This plan is open to the objection that it is highly unscientific. At no other point in the game is the player allowed to strike his ball, and failing his object to remove it with his hand from the scene of action. According to the plan now commonly followed, the player who misses the first hoop, often obtains an advantage; whereas a moment's thought will render it obvious to all, that so gross a blunder as missing an easy hoop, ought, in a scientific game, to entail a large measure of retribution. If, for instance, the ball were required to remain where it lies, so that it could not get through its hoop under two strokes ; or, better still, if it were considered in play, so that it could be made use of by the adversary, missing the first hoop would meet with an appropriate punishment.

The more this point is considered, the more apparent it becomes that to allow the taking up of a ball out of harm's way because it has made a stupid stroke, is unsound in principle. The beauty of croquet depends on the combinations that follow as soon as two or more balls are in play; and this being so, a rule that gets the balls in play at once, i.e. immediately after the first stroke, is evidently in harmony with the genius of the game.

Again, since a player may obtain an advantage by missing the first hoop, it consequently happens that he may miss it on purpose; avowedly if he thinks it fair so to do. On some grounds, in order to avoid this, the player is required to make a bona fide shot for the first hoop. This is a bad rule, as it places the striker in a false

position. An unscrupulous player might play carelessly, and so gain his end, without tampering much with the remains of his conscience; and the scrupulous player, perhaps from over-care, might miss and miss until he was suspected of unfair play.

Where it is not compulsory to run the hoop, we have known two players, each desiring the other to begin first, to keep on "muffing" the first hoop designedly, till it became obvious that, under the existing rule, the game could not be played at all. This in itself shows the unsoundness of such a mode of commencing, or rather of not commencing. It could not possibly happen if the ball were in play as soon as struck, because the second player would then play to run the first hoop, with the intention of using the ball that had missed.

This also not unfrequently happens, that a player missing the first hoop with his last ball, will not go through with that ball till the adversary has got on so far in the game as to have his position commanded, by a hard shot through the second hoop. The advantage to a good player of getting the break thus even once in the game is so considerable that having missed with the fourth ball, it is often the game for this ball not to run his hoop for several strokes. And as before observed, to keep a ball thus out of play is to spoil the combinations of the game.

To obviate these defects, the plan of lying up for the first hoop was devised. Under this system the ball may be shot at the hoop, or if preferred, the player may bowl himself towards and in front of it, or as it is called, lie up for it. The consequence is, that all the balls get in a cluster round the hoop, with the professed intention of going through to a "moral" next time. But in practice it is found disadvantageous for one ball to go through without the partner; and hence, if the first player goes through, the second instead of playing at the hoop, will roquet the third away, or in front of the hoop, so that he cannot run it under two shots, while the second and fourth players get through at their leisure. This leads to a great deal of roqueting about the first hoop, and it often results that no ball gets through under half a dozen shots, because nobody will go through first, unless there is a good chance of his partner's getting through at his next turn. This prolongs the game, which is already quite long enough, if not too long; gives an enormous advantage to the partners who first get in-the advantage of the first player being already too great; and introduces a quantity of knocking about at the first hoop, which is not croquet: for, inasmuch as the balls lying up have not gone under a hoop, they are not considered "in play" in the technical sense of the word, that is, they lie on the