LEAVES FROM A GAME BOOK. 215 



fine fat stags, as bad luck would have it, they were 

 all off our beat ; so, finding nothing but small stags, 

 I did not fire a shot. Thorburn went with me all day, 

 and took several pretty sketches and photographs of 

 the gillies with their ponies. Whilst at dinner, the 

 Kyle Strome express brought word that the party there 

 had got three stags that day. 



On the 24th, although it blew a gale, with heavy 

 showers falling, Charles Cavendish went to the hill and 

 got a nice stag, while I tried to fish Loch Stack; 

 but the wind was so fierce that our boat could not 

 face the loch proper, and we had to work in a sheltered 

 comer at one end of it, where I took about a dozen 

 nice sea trout. In the afternoon the Kyle Strome 

 party arrived at Lochmore, when it was arranged we 

 were to take their places on Monday, this day being 

 Saturday. 



On the 26th I started, at nine o'clock, to stalk over 

 the hills between Lochmore and Kyle Strome, with 

 William Elliot as companion. It was luckily a day 

 so splendid that the keenest stalker or the most 



