of an animal so restless as a stag, should heal, but it is the case.

Damph is the Gaelic for stag, and dubh is black, and for the next few hours the two words were often in use. If a man wishes to pronounce the first, he had better consult a phonetic dictionary, and he must, moreover, be careful that he does not dislocate his jaw. Then we began the long stern-chase which a deer so wounded always gives. What stalker does not know what this means? the wild racing at first, when there is a hope of cutting him off and getting a near shot; the collapse to the ground when, suddenly coming in sight of him, he is a hundred and fifty yards off, going still-end on. You try and pull yourself together, try and stop for a moment your beating heart, try and steady your sights on the dun object which you pray will stand, but which goes on, on: in a moment he will be round some knoll, out of sight, and though you can see nothing but the hinder end of him, in desperation you fire. "Over him, sir!" Again you pull the trigger. "Over him again!" and he passes out of sight. As hard as you can travel you reach the place where you last saw him; a long graze in the turf shows the place where the first bullet struck, but you cannot see the mark of the other, and you follow on still, with a faint hope that after all it may be in him. Then suddenly we see the deer, half a mile below us, going strongly yet, and the useless pursuit is stopped, and a council of war held. The stag will travel across Scotland if we press him now.

When a man has run for even a few hundred yards along the face of a very steep hill, picking his way with

little caution over sharp stones, racing madly over smooth turf, striving the while to keep his wind, knowing that in a few seconds he may have to stand and take his shot, anxiety and desire and pleasure are strangely jumbled up. He will probably go at least one proper cropper-feel what making a Catherinewheel on a Scotch mountain is like. It is well for him if this circumvolution takes place on a green slope, for if among the stones it may be that the rifle will get out of his grasp, and valuable time be lost in getting hold of it again. As to any wounds that the owner thereof receives, he will have time to think about them when his run is over-not before.

After a hard run any one may miss his stag, and he cannot be fairly blamed for it. Sometimes a stalker, jealous of his reputation, and of others having a larger score than he has, is unfair. "Mr So-and-So was within a hundred yards of a stag, broadside on, and he missed him clean," omitting the little incident of the run. Probably this suppressio veri does not often take place, and there was at any rate little fear of good Farquhar Macphail of Monar being guilty of it. Always patient and watchful, very rarely was it his fault if you did not get your fair chance. And if you missed, and all the careful anxious work of perhaps half a day was lost, he was always cheerful and considerate, and anxious to admit a fair excuse, though the disappointment to him was often as great as to his master.

Our stag went into a small hollow about a mile ahead of us, and the keenest eye could not see him coming out. We tried to stalk him here, but the

watchful beast was too cunning. Long before we got within shot he was up again and away. Then we attempted to head him. Angy, Macphail's second son, took in hand the work now.

The stag crossed a burn and the glen, and passed along the face of a mighty hill opposite, and Angy's duty was to get above him. The lad travelled with amazing speed along the very steep ground, and got far above the deer, but the damph dubh was too cunning for us all. With one eye on his foes below, and the other on the boy above, he took the middle course of safety, got round the shoulder of the mountain, and we saw him no more.

Who shall adequately describe the vexation—the word is far too mild a one-which such work as this causes? You are losing precious time and disturbing ground and throwing away the chance of another stalk. You do not know what is the cause of the missing, and so you include everything in your condemnation with a sweep like the comprehensive curse which so aroused the sympathy of Uncle Toby,-the rifle, the pull of the trigger, the quality of the powder. Rifle-shooting is such extremely delicate work, that a very small movement at the muzzle makes a very large difference to the bullet when it gets a hundred and twenty yards or so away. When a man gets nervous at the close neighbourhood of deer, he need go no further to find out the cause of his errors. It was not nervousness which caused my misses. misses. I could shoot as steadily at a stag as at a rock-steadier, for in the former case I never thought of the recoil. But there are times, which probably all men who shoot know, when you fire

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indeed, but do so with the firm conviction that you might save your labour. From a crooked barrel charged with mere damp sawdust what good shall come? The digestion that day is not quite as it ought to be, and so-and therefore-the eye does not do its work. There are too many little black specks jumping about; the foresight is too big-it covers the stag; or it is too small-you cannot pick it quickly up and fit it into the V. I remember once a man—a fine and experienced shot-standing some two hundred yards from a cover prepared to take the pheasants which he knew would soon issue out of it. That the birds would fly high and fast above his head-for they were away from home and had a long flight to get back againand that there were a good many fair ladies watching, gave him no uneasiness: he was used to both the one and the other. So he stood.

The pheasants came out, high-flying, raking through the clear frosty air, giving difficult shots it may be to a novice, but nothing unusual to him. They came on and he fired at them. When after some twenty minutes the beaters came up, and, knowing the prowess of the shooter, expected to see the ground covered with the slain, they found-well-a few runners, a few dead ones, a good many tail-feathers, and a man choking with rage. It has always been considered by his friends a most fortunate circumstance that a pretty wide interval of space divided this man that day from the spectators who had come out to see his prowess. No doubt he had committed some crime, and this was part of his punishment for it. Perhaps this view is the most philosophical one to take of missing.

When the eye and arm and the finger do not work together, it is a sign that a man has been doing something he ought not to have done. He is punished for it, and he starts, we will hope, with a clear sheet-a tabula rasa-in the morning.

Night came at last, and we felt we had seen the last of the black stag for ever: the wound seemed to be pretty low down the leg, and we knew that after he had had a little rest he would travel on, and most likely leave the forest; be shot perhaps by some one on the neighbouring ground, or-getting safely through the few remaining days of the season-live on to a good old age,—a little lame, it might be, in the near hind-leg, his near horn not quite so good as the far.

The next day, after another long wait in the rain, the weather cleared a little, and we left the primitive shelter of the fank and climbed up the steep south side of the glen, meaning to try a stalk on a stag which had been seen there earlier in the day. He was gone when we came in sight of the place, and the men began to spy the ground before us. Disconsolate I sat on the grass, chucking stones down the hill and thinking of yesterday's proceedings. Things had begun well with me: I got a stag the first day, three good ones the second; what had I done that I should now become the sport of fortune in this fashion? Why should I be persecuted by Tomas and his clan? I had never done the old chief any harm; I could not if I had wanted to, for he had been dead for probably three hundred years before I was born. And if he considered that he had still somehow some vested interest in the deer, and was annoyed at their being hunted, why was