256 THE MOOR AND THE LOCH. 



hill-fox, his supplanting rival. Litter destruction, trap, and 

 gun are telling on the red prowler, and, like the marten and 

 wild -cat, he is gradually becoming -rarer. Still, the old- 

 fashioned fox-hunter is not yet banished from the primeval 

 lands of Glen Falloch, but conducts his spring and autumn 

 hunts in the stereotyped style of " sixty years since." 



He is a dark bony man in the decline of life, descended 

 from a race of fox-hunters, his father and grandfather having 

 had charge of the same wild district as himself. Scrupulously 

 polite and courteous to gentlemen when addressing me he 

 always confers the honour of knighthood if irritated by the 

 farmers or shepherds composing his hunt, he is a perfect 

 master of Gaelic slang. Being a good running shot, he is as 

 punctilious in claiming precedence for the first chance at a 

 fox as the chief of the olden time at the stag ; and woe be- 

 tide the subordinate who dares to fire before him ! Two 

 farmers having bolted Reynard with their terriers from some 

 rocks, and missed him just when the "tod -hunter" was 

 rushing up, he saluted them with such a volley of abuse 

 as completely stunned the whole party. One of the bunglers 

 soon recovered presence of mind enough to unpocket a whisky- 

 flask and deal a glass round ; then, turning to the fox-hunter, 

 " Had it no' been for your ill-tongue ye suld hae had yin tae ; " 

 which knowing dodge as effectually cooled the deathsman of 

 the " tods " as if it had been a bucket of water. 



How different soever their characters or dispositions may 

 be, there is no doubt that men of the same occupation acquire 

 a family likeness. Eatcatchers, "molemen," the old beadles 

 of the Kirk, characteristically nicknamed " bell-tows," as well 

 as cabmen, weavers, tailors, shepherds, &c., all are outwardly 

 modelled into shape by the tools of the shop they work in. 

 No better example of this general rule than the Highland 

 tod-hunter. His free step, bronzed half-savage face, keen eye, 

 and sinewy frame, tell tales of a wild life among mountains 



