CHAP, v.] POACHING. 48 



CHAPTER V. 



Poaching in the Highlands Donald Poachers and Keepers Bivouac in 

 Snow Connivance of Shepherds Deer killed - Catching a Keeper 

 Poaching in the Forests Shooting Deer by Moonlight Ancient Poachers. 



I HAD a visit last week from a Highland poaclier of some 

 notoriety in his way. Pie is the possessor of a brace of the 

 finest deer-hounds in Scotland, and he came down from his 

 mountain-home to show them to me, as I wanted some for a 

 friend. The man himself is an old acquaintance of mine, as I had 

 fallen in with him more than once in the course of my rambles. 

 A finer specimen of the genus Homo than Ronald I never saw. 

 As he passes through the streets of a country-town, the men 

 give him plenty of walking room ; while not a girl in the street 

 but stops to look after him, and says to her companions " Kh, 

 but yon 's a bonnie lad." And indeed Ronald is a " bonnie 

 /or/" about twenty-six years of age his height more than 

 six feet, and with limbs somewhat between those of a Hercules 

 and an Apollo he steps along the street with the -good-natured 

 self-satisfied swagger of a man who knows all the womtn are 

 admiring him. He is dressed in a plain grey kilt and jacket, 

 with an otter-skin purse and a low skull-cap with a long peak, 

 from below which his quick eye seems to take at a glance in 

 everything which is passing around him. A man whose life is 

 spent much in hunting and pursuit of wild animals, acquires un- 

 consciously a peculiar restless and quick expression of eye, ap- 

 pearing to be always in search of something. When Ronald 

 doffs his cap, and shows his handsome hair and short curling 

 beard, which covers all the lower part of his face, ami which he 

 seem-; to be something of a dandy al>out, I do not know a finer 

 looking fellow amongst all my acquaintance and his occupa- 

 tion, which affords him constant exerci>e without hard labour, 

 gives him a degree of strength and activity seldom equalled. 



