DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 231 



to me and said, *I understand you brought a gun 

 with 5^ou expecting some shooting. \\'ill you come 

 with us to-day?' His was just the voice to malve the 

 invitation welcome; such a voice as would make 

 a man or woman desirous of seeing the speaker's face 

 a second time. It is upon the cards that, hungering 

 though I was for a da}^ amongst the grouse, I should 

 have said to either of the others, 'Thanks ! it is very 

 kind of you to ask me, but I prefer the fishing.' Yet, 

 to this man, I eagerly said, *0h ! I should be delighted.' 



How it came about that I was given the topmost 

 position I did not ask, but marched off under the 

 guidance of a youthful Pat and a dog (I knew to 

 whose insistence I owed the latter), to reach my lofty 

 starting-point, whence the next gun seemed very 

 distant, divided from me by a broad space of almost 

 perpendicular, shaly rock. At a given signal, which 

 the boy saw, he directed me forward, and very soon 

 reports that echoed in the hollows of the mountain- 

 side below, and then again above me, told that the 

 day's sport was on. 



When the boy released the dog, the animal took 

 a peep at me and the instrument I carried, and then 

 wagged his tail, but he did not come to my proffered 

 hand; he turned his nose to business with a jerk 

 that said, *No time now for that.' It was impossible 

 to doubt that the man whose words and manner had 

 brought me where I was had given me a dog that 

 knew his work. The heather was scanty in places, 

 and there was only a belt of some thirty yards in 

 width, with bare rocks on either side, and, as the 

 little wind there was cam.e to us, the dog's work was 

 not difhcult, but the ease and truth with which he 

 did it was the saving feature of my position. Crack I 

 crack I many times repeated came up in the first 

 half-hour, during which I had twice refused hares 

 that in their scampering up offered easy shots. At 

 last the dog's action said, 'Look out, your turn 



