DECEMBER SPORT IN THE HIGHLANDS. 303 



grouse have packed long ago, and are as wild as hawks ; but even 

 now, within a few days of the close of the season, odd birds are to 

 be picked up on the moor after a frosty night, when the sun 

 comes out bright and warm ; the woodcock, too, have arrived, and 

 are to be found here and there throughout the coverts and coppices, 

 while on the tracts of heather-covered and tussocky bog, snipe are 

 fairly numerous, and duck not unknown. 



To-day, Jack and I are going to have a day on our own hook, 

 just to see what we can do in the shape of a mixture ; and, accom- 

 panied only by Ross, the keeper, and a single gillie, we sally forth 

 as soon as we have swallowed an eight o'clock breakfast. A mag- 

 nificent morning; yesterday there was a slight fall of snow, and 

 during the night a hard black frost ; the snow lies dry an inch or 

 so deep upon the frozen ground, and in feathery festoons decks 

 the branches of the pine-trees ; beyond the line of dark woods, the 

 blue waters of the Cromartie Firth ripple in the early breeze, and 

 a brilliant sun lights up the wintry scene. Within a couple of 

 hundred yards of the house, and before steady-going, painstaking 

 old Fan, the retriever, has quite got into trim, up jumps a lively 

 coney among our feet, and receives three hasty barrels with 

 apparent enjoyment, but the fourth enables Fan to bring it back 

 to us in triumph, grunting and puffing with delight. Now we 

 approach the line of a tiny streamlet, which here finds its way 

 through the broad strip of open covert we are beating. Fan knows 

 as well as we do that there should be a cock or two about, and acts 

 accordingly. Carefully the old bitch feathers along among the 

 frozen fern and undergrowth which border the little watercourse, 

 her grey muzzle close to the ground, her black and curly tail 

 quivering with excitement " Mark cock " comes from my left, and 



