230 CREATURES OF PREY 



rocks in a way that showed me it had passed under the 

 stag's belly. 



He was gone ! I had doubly bungled, but worse was 

 to follow. 



More deer were coming up the pass. 'There, take 

 that one/ hissed Donald, cramming in a third cartridge 

 as a noble stag ambled by. It was hardly such an easy 

 shot as the first ; still, it was one which there was no 

 shadow of excuse for missing; nevertheless, missed 

 it was. 



Drenched and dispirited, I descended the hill, con- 

 firmed in my boding that deer-stalking is not all plums 

 an impression which a successful stalk and neatly 

 killed stag in the evening has not entirely dispelled. 



LIV 



During a fortnight spent last year in Knoydart I 

 Creatures devoted some inquiry into the survival of 

 of Prey. certain of the rarer British mammals in that 

 wild region. Knoydart is the western moiety of Glen- 

 garry's ancient territory, which was once so finely 

 explained to an English lord by the chief's stalker, 

 Alastair Dubh, as they sat together on the summit 

 of Corrie Glas. ' All that you see,' he said, waving his 

 hands around, 'is Glengarry's'; but, of course, the 

 crowded hill-crests concealed a great deal of the 

 property, so he added, 'and all that you do not see, 

 that is Glengarry's also!' There are Macdonalds still 

 in the lonely Knoydart glens, though the soil has 



