AFFRAY WITH POACHERS 



CHAPTER V 



Poaching in the Highlands— Ronald — Poachers and Keepers— Bivouac in Snow — 

 Connivance of Shepherds — Deer killed — Catching a Keeper — Poaching in the 

 Forests— Shooting Deer by Moonlight — Ancient Poachers. 



I HAD a visit last week from a Highland poacher of some 

 notoriety in his way. He is the possessor of a brace of the 

 finest deer-hounds in Scotland, and he came down from his 

 mountain home to show them to me, as I wanted some for a 

 friend. The man himself is an old acquaintance of mine, as I 

 had fallen in with him more than once in the course of my 

 rambles. A finer specimen of the genus Homo than Ronald 

 I never saw. As he passes through the streets of a country- 

 town, the men give him plenty of walking room ; while not a 

 girl in the street but stops to look after him, and says to her 

 companions — " Eh, but yon's a bonnie lad." And indeed Ronald 

 ts a " bonnie lad " — about twenty-six years of age — his height 

 more than six feet, and with limbs somewhat between those of 

 a Hercules and an Apollo — he steps along the street with the 



