212 SPORT. 



he had been thirty years on the hill and that 

 such a thing had never happened before, that he 

 would, even with his large family, have given £i 

 out of his own pocket for me to have got that 

 stag, — till the genius of Ananias himself, or even 

 the Government front bench answering questions 

 about Gordon, would have paled before the perennial 

 flow of his exuberant falsehoods. Sternly silent 

 all the way home I trudged, and next day, never 

 to return, left that ill-omened glen and its unfee'd 

 stalker, whom, on the " no shot, no tip " principle, 

 I should have had to pay. 



But, meliora canamtts, few, thank Heaven, are 

 even as this man. I will start, if the reader will 

 consent to embody himself in me, and not object 

 to be put forward or back, as the case may be — 

 let me hope for his sake it will be forward, — to 

 the age of thirty or thereabouts, on a serene morn- 

 ing in the middle of September, from a real High- 

 land lodge, a small but very solidly-built square 

 edifice, flanked by round towers with extinguisher 



