HIGHLAND STALKERS 295 



discovered him on his knees, busy with his hands in tearing up 

 the ground. On asking why he did not come on, the forester 

 seriously assured him " that he had seen a mouse, and, if he did 

 not catch her and get her blood, they should kill no deer that 

 day." If by accident you put up a blue hare, and she muses 

 over you, some foresters would risk the disturbing of the whole 

 stalk, by asking you to kill the hai-e, rather than attempt the 

 sport of stalking without her blood. 



The knowledge that such ridiculous superstitions exist makes 

 me loth to trust the conduct of a day's stalk to any man so 

 possessed. Indeed, I think that half the pleasure consists in 

 stalking for a shot yom-self. If you are simply to follow the 

 steps of a conductor, there is no interest to sustain you against 

 fatigue, and I feel myself when so situated walking mechanically, 

 and my mind far away thinking of other matters. I walk, in 

 short, with somebody else's legs, and depend on another man's 

 eyes, and, of course, am proportionately dissatisfied with him if 

 he fails in bringing me up to a deer. What I should like best 

 would be to have a young and zealous boy with me to look out 

 for the deer and show me the ground, and then leave me alone 

 to prosecute the endeavour. Nothing can make me believe that 

 it is not easier for one man to approach a wild deer than for 

 three, accompanied by a brace of greyhounds ; but, on express- 

 ing this opinion to Stuart, he replied, " No ; the same thing 

 would conceal us all." So the same cover might in easy hills, 

 when you approached the deer behind a rise of the heather, 

 wind and all things suiting, but not when you had to pass spots 

 in bird's-eye view of the deer, or to mount a sky-line, or, what 

 is just as bad, pass the water line along the margin of a lake 

 with the deer in sight above you. The ill luck which usually 

 attends me made itself peculiarly manifest on the day on which 

 I went for a stalk in the wood of Gusa. Having ordered myself 

 to be called between five and six, two gillies rowed me up the 

 lake at dark, before a storm of wind from the east that, as I 

 steei'ed, made me think the little boat was running away with 

 all of us, and gave me, as I kept her well before the wind, a 



