CHAPTER FIVE ON POACHERS 



I HAD a visit last week from a Highland poacher of 

 some notoriety in his way. He is the possessor of a 

 brace of the finest deer-hounds in Scotland, and he 

 came down from his mountain-home to show them 

 tome, as I wanted some for a friend. The man himself is 

 an old acquaintance of mine, as I had fallen in with him 

 more than once in the course of my rambles. A finer speci- 

 men of the genus Homo than Ronald I never saw. As he 

 passes through the streets of a country-town, the men give 

 him plenty of walking room; while not a girl in the street 

 but stops to look after him, and says to her companions — 

 "Eh.butyon'sabonnielad." Andindeed Ronald isa^'bon- 

 nie lad" — about twenty-six years of age — his height more 

 than six feet, and with limbs somewhat between those of 

 a Hercules and an Apollo — he steps along the street with 

 thegood-naturedself-satisfiedswagger of a man whoknows 

 all the women are admiring him. He is dressed in a plain 

 grey kilt and jacket, with an otter-skin purse and a low 

 skull-cap with a long peak, from below which his quick eye 

 seems to take in, at a glance, everything which is passing 

 around him. A man whose life is spent much in hunting and 

 pursuit of wild animals, acquires unconsciously a peculiar 

 restless and quick expression of eye, appearing to be al- 

 ways in search of something. When Ronald doffs his cap, 

 and shows his handsomehair andshort curlings beard, which 

 covers all the lower part of his face, and which he seems to 

 be something of a dandy about, I do not know a finer look- 

 ing fellow amongst all my acquaintance — and his occup- 

 ation, which affords him constant exercise without hard 

 labour, gives him a degree of strength and activity seldom 

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