3 i4 WINTER IN THE NORTH 



though he supplies his larder as a rule with the hares, 

 must have taken toll many a time from the firstlings of 

 the flock, judging by his size and grand condition. But 

 before you have time to snatch the gun from the gillie 

 who has relieved you of it, he has vanished round the 

 corner of the nearest ridge, to reappear by-and-by on a 

 more distant slope, going pleasantly within himself at a 

 comfortable canter. 



The actual ptarmigan-shooting in itself is, it must be 

 confessed, somewhat tame. Although there is little 

 difficulty in finding the birds at first, since they are 

 pretty sure to get up shy and wild, yet they will often 

 return nearly to the spot from whence they were sprung, 

 and wait your second approach comparatively calmly. 

 And as they have a trick of dropping sharply behind 

 the rocks where they rise, you need not scruple to shoot 

 them sitting. But there is something grandly exciting 

 in the sport all the same, as you go scrambling among 

 the rocks and fallen boulders ; taking jumps that in 

 cooler blood you would eschew ; setting the serious 

 chances of fractured limbs at defiance ; and keeping 

 on your legs in shooting attitude as best you can, 

 while swaying your breech-loader in the air by way 

 of a balancing-pole. The sense of taking one's diver- 

 sion aloft in the blue empyrean, far above the normal 

 regions of a Highland cloudland, is in itself exhilarat- 

 ing enough ; and the air you inhale is light as laughing- 

 gas, without being sojrarefied as to try the lungs. Then 

 the white ptarmigan, flushed from their perch on the 

 cliffs, go circling beneath your feet round splintered 



