40 ERCHLESS AND FARLEY, 1917 



would at once go for a good 10-pointer he had 

 spied from the spying rock about two miles north, 

 close to the path leading to Glengowrie; so we 

 turned our footsteps northwards, and without 

 any difficulty got to about 500 yards from where 

 our stag was feeding. There we found there were 

 two or three nobbers with him, evidently posted as 

 sentinels; but he had fed rather far from his 

 sentries, and so we decided to crawl in and chance 

 one who was posted a good deal above the 10- 

 pointer, as if he saw us Fraser thought he would 

 be too far away to give the alarm. All went well, 

 and we got quite close to our friend, about 70 

 yards, and I had everything in my favour a com- 

 fortable position, plenty of time, and a good light ; 

 so my f eelings can be better imagined than described 

 when I fired and a clean miss was recorded ! Not 

 seeing where the shot came from, he stood for a 

 second or two and gave me time to fire again, and 

 this time he fell dead, and I signalled to Susan, 

 who was lying 200 yards behind us, to come up 

 and share the delight of examining our trophy. 

 When we got up to him one horn was buried in the 

 ground, and I said to Fraser, after looking at the 

 visible horn, " Well, this one has six points, any- 

 way"; and when we unearthed the other horn 

 there were six points too, and my prize was a 

 Royal ! My first and only one so far. The third 

 point of the thr^e on top on each side was very 

 short, only about an inch long, which accounted 



