MY FIRST STAG AND SOME OTHERS 15 



the neck. He carried a splendid royal head, with 

 beautiful tops, one of the best shot in the forest that 

 season. Alec had seen the head through his glass> 

 and had done his best to prevent my doing the same, 

 fearing lest the size and beauty of the stag might give 

 me too strong a dose of ' buck-fever/ But obviously 

 his time had come. Across his breast was a mark 

 like the sear of a hot iron. It was the graze of my 

 first bullet. c A near shave, that,' remarked Alec. 

 Four inches higher would have meant a clean kill at 

 the first attempt. On such trifling variations of a 

 bullet's flight do success, failure, or additional exciting 

 incidents, depend. 



Let us now change the scene again to another 

 far-away Scotch forest in Sutherland, where Ben 

 Loyal raises its head 3,000 feet above the North Sea, 

 and where the breezes from the North Pole blow with 

 untainted freshness across hundreds of miles of ocean. 

 It was the last day of the season. Our limit of twelve 

 stags w r as short by two. Sandy, the head- stalker, 

 and I were out for the day on the far slopes of 

 Ben Loyal, bent, if possible, on making up our tale. 

 Sandy knew every yard of the ground, and the 

 habits and run of a certain herd of hinds that never 

 left the forest. The value of this knowledge stood 

 us in good stead later in the day. In the morning we 

 had spied a good stag lying down in an open flat, 

 accompanied by a small harem of hinds, but, owing 

 to the unfavourable nature of the ground, could get 

 no nearer than a high ridge nearly 200 yards away. 

 We might, of course, have waited for the stag to rise. 

 But this might mean time we could ill spare, for there 

 was a second stag to be found and killed, if possible. 

 I determined to take the shot. Lying at full length 



