EEMIXISCEXCES OF A BOSS-SHIBE FOEEST. 117 



""Well, Murdoch, I only hope you'll see a stag 

 killed to-day ; " and he did, and a good one too. 



Offer a man like this and there are many of the 

 same sort the alternative of going out with a really 

 sure shot or with a very bad one, the former a man of 

 few sovereigns, the latter of many, he would choose 

 the former without a moment's hesitation. 



How about their bad temper? Well, they are 

 jealous of one another, very exactly as their betters 

 are ; they regard the deer they stalk as theirs. In 

 the dining-room it is yours or mine ; in the gun-room, 

 remember, it is Donald's or Duncan's. Looking at it 

 in this light, what can be more disappointing or try- 

 ing to the temper, after miles and miles of walking 

 and hours of patient waiting, sometimes in awful 

 weather, than to see a grand stag clean missed at 

 sixty yards 1 "Why, it would demoralise a bishop, let 

 alone a Highland gillie; and such disappointments I 

 have known an unlucky man meet with on two or 

 three consecutive days. The worst I ever heard of, 

 by the way, befell "old Duncan," of whom I have 

 previously spoken. He was out one day in September 

 with a gentleman in a part of the forest not generally 

 much frequented by deer. Some months previously 

 a wire fence had been run across from one hillside t: 

 another, one end terminating in a ledge of rocks, and 

 forming with them a cul de sac. "What did they see 

 huddled together in the corner but seven good stags ! 

 The wind was all right, and, some big rocks interven- 



