A HUNDRED YEARS IN THE HIGHLANDS 129 



haul him aside, was overbalanced, and away went both 

 the salmon and the gafier down into the pool. The 

 salmon was found dead from his wound, and thus it 

 was learned how the man was drowned, although no one 

 was present. 



" Rifles in 1817 were not actually unknown, but the 

 only one in Tigh Dige was an enormous one, say twelve 

 pounds weight, carrying a two-ounce ball, called the 

 Claiseach, meaning in Gaelic * the grooved one,' and a 

 still heavier one we called the Spainneach (the Spaniard), 

 with the sides of the bore half an inch thick, and, as 

 Paddy would say, * Its ball was a plug of lead two to 

 three inches long, warranted seldom to hit any mark 

 aimed at.' So Suter was armed with the Claiseach and 

 the Spainneach, and I had my father's double Joe 

 Manton, with a whittled-down bullet made to fit the 

 bore in one barrel and a lot of slugs in the other. It 

 was past nine ere we climbed the Cosag above Loch 

 Bhad na Sgalaig (Loch of the Ploughman's Grove), 

 walking and talking and exposing ourselves, as we were 

 not expecting deer for miles. On the top, as visible 

 to us as this pen is to me, and about one hundred yards 

 away, was a brown thing like a broken bank of reddish 

 earth with some curious sticks upon it. A minute's 

 look told us the sticks were a deer's horns and he himself 

 was the brown bank, evidently asleep, or otherwise 

 he would have soon said good-bye to us. 



*' In a minute we two ' innocents abroad ' scrambled 



out of sight, and, sweeping round the brae on which 



the deer was sleeping, walked, like lunatics, within 



twenty yards of him ere he awoke. A proper stalker 



9 



