198 AUGUST ON THE MOORS 



slaughter, gallops his spectre - steed, and bends his 

 phantom bow, without wasting the spirit of a sigh on 

 the dull monotony of his shadowy prairies, death 

 merely recurs incidentally in episodes, in the heaven of 

 the Highland sportsman. True, armed with breech- 

 loader for fangs or beak, he fulfills his allotted part in the 

 universal scheme of destruction. Around him, eagles, 

 ravens, hawks, grouse, foxes, wild cats, and promiscuous 

 " vermin " are all preying on their kind. But he asserts 

 the superiority of his God-like nature over rapacious 

 carnivorae and voracious insectivoras that perish, by the 

 thoughts that throb to the inmost fibres of his nobler 

 nature, by an exuberant intensity of grateful enjoyment, 

 that places him in charity with the very gor-cock that 

 finds its way with mocking crow through his bloodless 

 No. 6. 



Moors and hills, we said to begin with, because we 

 talk of mountain-sport and not of slaughter. There 

 is nothing to remind one of Hurlingham in what we 

 mean no steady rattle, remorseless as the harsh grind 

 of the mitrailleuse no lawn strewed with dead and 

 dying doves in their blood-soaked plumage nothing 

 to recall the hot corner in a home cover, when inquisi- 

 tive hares pay the penalty of their confidence as they 

 prick their ears trustfully among the knickerbockers, 

 and hand-fed pheasants meet the usual fate of pets as 

 they come to untimely ends. We do not even speak 

 of the long level stretch of flat, where the heather 

 grows in rich swathes, as if it had been carefully top- 

 dressed in model-farm fashion ; where, except for an 



