IN FOREST AND ON HILL 255 



Jodge stood high upon the stormy watershed between 

 the dips to the North Sea and to the Atlantic. It was 

 not much of a climb from the loftier of the grouse- 

 grounds, across the stony zone of the alpine hares, to 

 the lichen-stained rocks frequented by the ptarmigan ; 

 and though the walking was wild enough round slippery 

 and dizzy heights, on a clear and calm day the sport was 

 almost tame. At the outset there was no great difficulty 

 in finding the birds, for they would rise wild. Circling 

 and soaring like carrier-pigeons, they would go sweep- 

 ing round the jagged angles of the cliffs, or dipping 

 downwards to the heather flats below. But they always 

 come back towards the point from which they started, 

 or at least to the same level, and generally to the same 

 mountain. When you kept following them up, they 

 seemed to grow sullen. The second or third time they 

 would let you approach to within a half or a quarter 

 gunshot. Walking cautiously, and looking closely, the 

 graceful bend of the head and neck would disengage 

 itself from the tints of the cliff with which it harmonised 

 closely in colour. Then you might take a sitting shot 

 if you chose, or give them law with a fair probability 

 of missing them ; for, once scared from their perch, 

 they had a knack of disappearing behind it. In these 

 haunts of the ptarmigan, by the way, more than one 

 pair of golden eagles had their eyries ; and when caught 

 in the clinging folds of a fog we have felt the sough of 

 the pinion on our cheek as the mighty bird swept over 

 our shoulder, more startled and surprised than the 

 intruder on his solitude. 



