CHAPTER IV. 

 ELUSIVE STAGS. 



WHEN at last we reached the top my legs were as wabbly as if 

 they were filled with water, and the labored breaths I drew 

 seemed to me as noisefully come by as those of a wind-broken 

 horse. Now I was warm ; more than warm. I was hot under my heavy 

 clothing after this strenuous climb, but a moment after we topped the 

 crest emerging fairly into the embrace of a blast of such wintry tem- 

 perature that it carried with it stinging little particles of sleet, I felt my- 

 self as cold as Shackleton when he prodded round so close to the South 

 Pole. 



The freezing wind went through me like sharpened icicles, and in 

 a few minutes I was shivering. In the storm it was impossible to spy 

 for deer, and Donald, no doubt, struck with compassion for my pitiable 

 state moved to the partial shelter of a little dip in the top and here 

 with my back to the wind I fought with my discomfort, recalling for 

 my heartening, the hours of agrr.y I had known in my first essays in 

 other days, before lungs had a chance to expand and muscles to harden 

 to the hard tasks of hill and mountain. 



The gillie from the rear came up to Donald when we stopped and 

 another whispered conversation ensued. I should say it was half an 

 hour or more we waited in that windswept space, though it seemed 

 hours to me. At length my stalker came to me saying as he pointed 

 almost into the teeth of the wind and toward the far slope of the 

 mountain : "There's a shootable staug doon there, sir, but I'm thinkin' 

 we canna' get at him. We'll just go doon here, sir." 



"Doon here" was the slope of the mountain to our right, where it 

 went, I should say, 2,000 feet, steeply, oh, very steeply, down to the 

 shore of a loch, whose waters looked black where the wind had not 

 spun the wave crest into spindrift white as snow. 



The slope was a grassy one, as steep as the roof of a house, almost 

 as sheer a drop as the side of a house, in fact. Underneath the grass 



