IN THE HIGHLANDS 137 



stalking the roe ? His spy-glass soon told that it was 

 Mr. Fox, so he took a lesson in stalking from him 

 without a fee ! In a few minutes the roe was kicking 

 helplessly below the fox, who, holding on by the throat, 

 soon killed him. Hector thought it was then time for 

 his stalk, and ere the fox had drained all the roebuck's 

 blood, Hector had potted him, and brought his skin 

 and the roe home. 



" Years after this, Frank (Sir Francis Mackenzie) 

 hired the Wyvis shooting, and at much expense in 

 keepers, etc., brought it up to be so good a moor that 

 in the last year of his tenancy, on the twelfth of August, 

 he shot over eighty brace of grouse to his own gun. 

 Having heard of the slaughter, the laird of Foulis, a 

 recluse living in London who had never himself put a 

 keeper on the ground, which, till my brother hired it, 

 was only shot over by poachers, resolved to allow it to 

 recover. I was then nominal tenant of the sheep-farm 

 of Wyvis, my brother being the real tenant, and in my 

 lease I was bound to protect the game from persons 

 trespassing. My shepherds gladly ordered off all who 

 were disturbing the sheep, till one day my shepherd, 

 George Hope, who came from the Borders, on a twelfth 

 of August saw three men with pointers and a pony and 

 creels on his beat, and had to tell them his orders were 

 to allow no one there. The reply was, * Unless you want 

 your collie shot you had better be off .' Nothing makes 

 a shepherd get * oot o* that ' so quickly as such a threat, 

 so he left the poachers alone, merely watching their move- 

 ments, suspecting, as there were blankets and pots, etc., 

 in the creels, that they were making for the Smugglers* 



