LIFE AT ROSEHALL. 31 



still solitary, and speeding in a direct course over bog and hill 

 to some far-off mountain glen or corrie. The shepherds, who 

 generally gave me notice of any particularly fine stag they might 

 see in their rounds, distinguished this one by a Gaelic name signi- 

 fying the big red stag, as, besides his other attributes, his colour 

 was of a peculiarly bright red. Donald and I had made an 

 unsuccessful raid or two into " the red stag's " country, some 

 unforeseen circumstance always warning him of our neighbour- 

 hood too soon ; besides which he had a troublesome habit of 

 suddenly rising in the most unaccountable manner from some 

 unexpected corner or hollow. We might examine long and care- 

 fully the whole face of a hill, and having made ourselves perfectly 

 sure that nothing larger than a mountain hare could be concealed 

 on its surface, up would rise " the red stag " from some trifling 

 hollow, or from behind some small hillock, and without looking 

 to the right or left, off he would go at his usual trot, till we lost 

 him in the distance. 



Another time, after we had beat, as we imagined, a whole 

 wood, so that we were convinced that neither deer nor roe could 

 have been passed over, up would get the stag out of some clump 

 of larch or birch, apparently scarcely big enough to hold a hare, 

 or else he would rise at the very feet of one of the beaters, and 

 though not above a hundred yards from the corner where I was 

 posted he always managed to turn back, perhaps almost running 

 over some man who had no gun ; but he invariably escaped being 

 shot at, excepting on one occasion, when I placed a friend who 

 was with me near a pass by which the stag sometimes left a 

 favourite wood. I had stationed the shooter at the distance of 

 half a mile from the wood, as the deer was always most careful 

 of himself, and most suspicious of danger, when he first left the 

 cover. On this occasion, according to my friend's account, the 

 great beast had trotted quickly and suddenly passed him at eighty 

 yards distance, and took no notice of the barrels discharged at his 

 broadside, though fired by a very good shot, and out of a first-rate 

 Manton gun that carried ball like a ritie. My friend could not 

 account for missing him ; but missed he evidently was. 



