THE DAY'S WORK 215 



hustling crowds at railway-counters, laden with fly- 

 blown pastry, flowing with fiery Hamburg wines. 

 After to-day you may add a cold grouse or two ; on 

 the twelfth you must dispense with that luxury. You 

 feel like the Ancient Mariner travestied in mountaineer 

 " Game, game around you everywhere, and not 

 a scrap to eat." Never mind, you manage to rough 

 it somehow, with a tolerable local imitation of a York- 

 shire pie, with cheese and oatcakes, and such manly 

 fare. Your meal is somewhere half-way between a 

 breakfast given by Lucullus, and one of those Spartan 

 spreads whose frugal menus were settled by the statutes 

 of Lycurgus. With the appetite you find, after getting 

 your breath again, and sending a lightly-laced mouthful 

 of chilling water hissing over your glowing palate, the 

 repast approaches nearer the former extreme than the 

 latter. Nor has the department of the cellar been 

 unattended to. Dugald, officiating as chief butler, has 

 already, with a certain careful contempt, deposited in 

 the cooling wave the flasks that speak of shadeless 

 vineyards on the glowing gravel slopes of the Gironde. 

 With infinite love and tenderness he has immersed by 

 their side the more sturdy green glass bottle that 

 contains the sacred usquebaugh the Highlandman's 

 genuine water of life. There are metal flasks of it 

 besides ; but that is a point on which prudence counsels 

 stinting your liberality. The honest members of your 

 tail walk steady enough as a rule, and you may trust 

 them absolutely in most things ; but you can scarcely 

 complain of their tripping if you set the snare for them 



