70 LEAVES FBOM A GAME BOOK. 



during the whole time neither of us fired simultaneously 

 at the same bird. 



During my stay at Corrour Lucy's butler, a most 

 reliable man, used to amuse himself in the afternoons 

 by catching trout in a burn which ran near by. 

 One day he came back with the following extra- 

 ordinary story. He told us that, having fished some 

 half-mile below the house, he sat down to smoke 

 a pipe on a high bank of heather some thirty yards 

 from a miniature pool, through which the stream 

 ran very sluggishly. While thus resting, he saw a 

 great number of rats approaching the burn from the 

 opposite side; he estimated the company to be some 

 hundreds strong, and being curious to see what 

 such a crowd of these pests could be doing, he sat 

 quite still and remained unnoticed. When the rats 

 reached the bank of the burn, their leader went into the 

 water and held on to a heather root with his teeth, while 

 another one passed over his back, and, taking hold of 

 the leader's tail, dropped himself into the water, this 

 process being repeated time after time, until the living 



