IN THE HIGHLANDS 121 



on the water, and you were as sure of your bird as if you 

 had a boat and crew with which to fetch it. With the 

 experience of the many years she had worked the ground, 

 she would find about twice as much game as most other 

 dogs. She knew the sedgy pool where a jack snipe was to 

 be found, and the smooth greenish slopes where the great 

 flocks of golden plover spent their days sunning them- 

 selves and waiting for the dusk, when they could get on 

 to the crofters' potato patches ; and also where the brown 

 hares and partridges were likely to be, and the cairns 

 which held blue hares. She always did her best to get 

 us hares, though she never chased them, and what a 

 dab hand she was at a woodcock ! 



One of her wonderful talents was always appearing 

 to know in a moment if a bird were hit or not. She 

 would stand up on her hind-legs so as to try to mark 

 it down as far as she could. She had another marvellous 

 quality, which was that she could gauge whether a bird 

 was mortally wounded or not, and she knew if she could 

 make sure of grabbing it, or whether it would rise again 

 and require another shot. So if we saw Fan pointing 

 a wounded bird and waiting for a gun to come up, then 

 we knew it was only slightly hit ; otherwise Fan managed 

 the business herself, and spared us all trouble by stalking 

 up to it like a cat, and then, with a sudden rush, seizing 

 it and bringing it back to us in her mouth without the 

 mark of a tooth on it. 



After a year or two of the sporting rights on Inverewe 

 only, I added three outlying portions of the Gairloch 

 property to my shooting, by hiring from my brother the 

 Isle of Ewe, the extensive hill grazings of the Mellan, 



