70 THE GROUSE 



"The 12th of August" originally and 

 once again appeared, reproduce it here. 



"The 12th of August." 



Day had broken about an hour ago — a grey, 

 windless, early morning. There was nothing mov- 

 ing on the moors that the sharpest-eyed man could 

 see, and nothing in the air but one speck of a 

 hawk hanging like a spider from an invisible 

 thread. Yet there was really a whole nation 

 alive and stirring through the heather. The 

 opening ling never moved, not so much as the 

 least twig of it. The black pools among the 

 peat-bogs might have been mirrors for the wild 

 grasses ; there was nothing but silence and loneli- 

 ness from the sky-line of the hills to the peeps of 

 far-away crofts, and all the time the little brown 

 people were moving everywhere through the moor- 

 land. At last, on the side of a wide valley, one 

 of them came boldly into view, towering full 

 18 inches above a tuft of heath, and quick as 

 thought you might have seen the little hawk 

 grow suddenly larger. He was a fine old cock 

 grouse who aired himself on the tuft, his red- 

 rimmed eyes looking keenly up and down the 

 strath, his demeanour evidently a little anxious. 

 He had the manner, in fact, of some one who 

 expects something to happen. Presently another 

 little brown head, with the brightest of eyes, rose 

 from the heather, and a lady grouse came to his 



