AN UNSUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENT. 75 



I felt that I had no time to attempt the adjustment of the telescope 

 which had foiled me, to the rifle, so I set it aside and the next morning 

 returned to my own faithful weapon. 



My stalk was with Danny, in the far ground of the stony dykes 

 where I had been with him on two other occasions, once to miss a 

 steeply downhill shot, after the grand stalk down the dangerous face, 

 while the Chief killed his deer, the other to pursue phantom stags 

 all day and fire not at all. 



The mist on this day was the heaviest I had yet found in Scotland. 

 It shut down about us so thickly at times that it was not possible to 

 see twenty feet in any direction. It was like a London fog, only 

 lacking the smells of the city to be quite the counterpart of that 

 metropolitan murkiness. 



We had to sit down upon the mountainside and wait and wait and 

 wait, one hour, two hours, three hours, in the cold and the damp 

 for the fog to clear or lift. Every few moments Danny or one of the 

 two gillies with us would say, "Weel, I'm thinkin' 'twill be better 

 syne," but the "syne" was a long one. Finally, after about three 

 hours there did seem to be more light, although the fog was not 

 dissipated, and we moved on to the top. 



Here the fog had turned by now into rain which, driven by a 

 high wind, made itself felt beyond any attempts to ignore it. Looking 

 over the edge of the high rock dyke, which formed the limit of the 

 particular mountain we were on, the fog in the valley below resembled 

 great masses of slightly soiled white cotton drawn hither and thither 

 and yon by great invisible fingers impatient of its presence and de- 

 sirous of removing it. 



We also were impatient of it, because we felt, though we could not 

 see, the presence of deer in the lower levels. The wind on the top 

 by some slanting process of its own, or it may be because it veered 

 in direction, began to cut into glen and corrie and tumble the mist 

 out ahead of it. 



There came breaks in the curtain, which hid the floor of the nearest 

 big corrie from us and through one of these Danny soon picked up 

 a good herd of deer. They were not at all satisfied with themselves 

 or their position and were moving around most restlessly. We watched 

 them a long time before the experienced stalker made up his mind to 



