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Stuart thought, the wind of him, we tried to get at him, but 

 again in vain ; when we made him out, he and his hinds were 

 restless, and, on approaching his locality, he had vanished. We 

 then gave the whole affair up; it was blowing and raining 

 torrents, and, having sought the margin of Loch Arkeg, we 

 were on our return home when I thought, on glancing up the 

 side of the hill, that I could see a deer. Stuart directed his 

 glass, but declared there were none there ; when his son, Donald 

 Stuart, as quick and intelligent a youth as I wish to see, 

 asserted that he could see a stag and hinds, and that the stag 

 was a very large one and lying down; and all this with the 

 naked eye. His father, so directed, then made them out, and 

 we once more prepared to stalk them. They with the stag 

 were lying on the side of the mountain in the wood above us, 

 and were visible, as I said before, to Donald without the glass, 

 and, therefore, we must have been, had they looked at us, as 

 visible to them. When we commenced the stalk, however, the 

 stag was lying down very quietly, and there was no possibility 

 of his gaining our wind, so Stuart led along the water line with- 

 out stooping his tall form or bidding us to stoop a thing that, 

 had I been stalking, I should on no account have attempted ; I 

 should have crawled on my hands and knees beneath the bank, 

 and have escaped the notice of the deer above me. The wind 

 was right for this attempt in every possible way ; for, while we 

 were down-wind of the stag, it roared through the trees so much 

 as to drown any accidental noise in our approach. On we 

 crept, after we had passed the water line, cautiously enough. 

 We at last came to the spot where the stag had made his lair ; 

 he was gone, and from his lair I looked down on the lake, and 

 saw the mistake that had been committed ; when we walked the 

 water line in an erect position, the stag must have seen us all. 

 I reached Achnacarry at half -past seven, after a hard day, 

 having seen seventeen male deer, seven of whom had magnificent 

 heads, and were strangers from neighbouring forests; four of 

 them, to use Stuart's expression, were "terrible deers," and 

 larger than Lord Malmsbury had ever killed. For a day or 



