CHAPTER II 



HOW I TOOK A SHARE IN THE MONNIELACK SHOOTINGS, 

 AND WHAT CAME OF IT 



"Wanted, a gun, to complete a party of four, on an extensive 

 moor in the north ; probable bag, six to seven hundred brace, 

 with some roe deer, blackgame, partridges, and snipe ; game 

 equally divided. Terms, ;^2 50 for the month, which will 

 include everything. — Address, Colonel S. L., The Shooters' 

 Club, London, S.W." 



Such was the advertisement that caught my eyes one 

 day early in the month of August, 1889. Now I, Thomas 

 Gae Green, had passed the ten previous years not 

 wholly unprofitably in India, but the time thus spent 

 had carried me out of touch of all my old shooting friends, 

 and but few of them knew I had come back " for good " to 

 merrie England. 



The " twelfth " was close at hand, so as I longed to breathe 

 the Highland air again, and to see if I could still face the 

 hill as of old, this advertisement caught me just in the frame 

 of mind to make an experiment which I had hitherto vowed 

 nothing should ever induce me to try. It read like a genuine 

 affair, while the terms were certainly not exorbitant if the 

 statements were correct, so, before an hour had passed, I was 

 wating in the reception-room of "The Shooters," and, very 

 promptly, a tall, smart-looking man of about fifty, with a 

 red face, red whiskers, red moustache with slightly waxed 

 tips, and a pair of bright blue eyes, introduced himself to 

 me as Colonel Soft word Lovewell. His mellow voice, his 



