DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 267 



voice to make 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 day 

 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 : " Oh ! 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, shaley 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 impos- 

 sible 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 came to us, the dog's work was 

 not difficult, but the ease and truth with which he 

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

 crack ! many times repeated came up in the first 

 half-hour, during which I had twice refused hares 



