CHAP. V.] POACHING. 
i) 
CHAPTER V. 
Poaching in the Highlands—Donald—Poachers and Keepers—Bivcuac in 
Snow—Connivance of Shepherds—Deer killed—Catching a Keeper— 
Poaching in the Forests—Shooting Deer by Moonlight—Ancient Poachers, 
I wap 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 is a “ bennie 
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 good-natured 
self-satisfied swagger of a man who knows all the women are 
admiring him. He is dressed in a plain grey kilt and jacket, 
with an otter-skin purse and a Jow skull-cap with a long peak, 
from below which his quick eye seems to take at a glance in 
everything which is passing around him. A man whose life is 
spent much in hunting and pursuit of wild animals, acquires un- 
consciously a peculiar restless and quick expression of eye, ap- 
pearing to be always in search of something. When Ronald 
doffs his cap, and shows his handsome hair and short curling 
beard, which covers all the lower part of his face, and which he 
seems to be something of a dandy about, I do not know a finer 
looking fellow amongst all my acquaintance—and his occupa- 
tion, which affords him constant exercise without hard labour, 
gives him a degree of strength and activity seldom equalled. 
