haunches, sighted the weapon for a moment on a distant stump. "Is it in good order, Andrew?" he whispered. The old man's only reply was a scowl, and Traquair bit his lip. 'Sorry, Andrew, sorry, old man. Come on now!"

66

Cautiously they crept around the base of the crag, and wormed into the mouth of the left-hand oorrie, then, bent double, step by step up its roof-like slope, keeping close beneath its wall. Quarter of an hour passed whilst they made good some two hundred yards. Then MoStegall signalled a halt. "We can see him from here," he breathed. Motioning Traquair to lie down, he put the glass to his eyes, and by eighths of an inch at a time raised his face above the parapet. So close were they now, that through the glasses the unconscious sentry seemed to be alongside, and even the hardened old stalker could not forbear a far longer spy than he had ever allowed himself before so near "the shot." On the topmost rock before him sat a vast, bearded old man, his rifle between his knees. On his grizzled head rested a huge terai hat, from which stuck out two long, straight feathers, like those from a pheasant's tail. McStegall, now sufficiently excited to be instinctively possessed by confused thoughts of "heads," particularly noted these feathers, and a grin creased his parchment visage as he subsided as noiselessly as the mercury in a thermom

eter down to his companion. "He's nobbut a 'switch," he whispered into Lord Donald's ear, "but a grreat, heavybodied beast withal; eighteen stone 'clean' at least!" Traquair gripped the rifle, but McStegall held up a prohibiting finger, then pointed farther up the corrie. He wished to gain another hundred yards if possible. But no sooner had they begun to crawl than something happened which made their hearts tap the ground beneath them like the sticks of a drum. A small bustard, fluttering up under the leader's very nose, bustled off noisily with loud bubbling cries which awoke the echoes on the mountain. "Spotted for certain!' croaked Traquair. 'Damn the grouse!" But McStegall pressed him to the ground with a hand of lead and iron. For ten agonising minutes they lay motionless as corpses. A sharp stone drove into Andrew's forearm, but like a very stone he bore the agony, feeling the blood break out when the skin broke. Traquair's face lay upon the stalker's iron-bound heel, and a great bruise began to throb and burn at his cheekbone. They heard the sentry start to his feet, and listened in agony lest footsteps should follow. They heard the clank of his rifle-bolt as he wrenched a round from the magazine into the chamber. Finally, after a long wait, they heard heard the sound they most desired, the heavy swag as, reassured, he dropped himself down again on

turned the body in order to make the binding fast on the other side. As he did so, the hat fell from the ghastly face. A loud shriek from McStegall stopped the beating of Traquair's heart, and even caused the sufferer's eyes to open slowly. "What is it, Andrew?" "Why," gasped the stalker, "why, if it isna' auld Andy McPherson wha flitted fra' the glen ane nicht fifteen year back, and has no' bin heerd of syne! Andy! D'ye mind me, Andrew McStegall fra' Knochkily Cottage, nigh the march? Andy!" "Never mind now," interposed the amazed Traquair, "let's get him away." The belt was quickly tightened over both wounds, and Lord Donald and Traquair were about to attempt to lift the huge bulk, when the man, who was plainly not so grievously hurt as it seemed, pointed backward towards a dip in the rock behind his post. McStegall looked at him suspiciously for a moment, then cautiously moved in the direction indicated, and there, surely enough, stood the sentry's horse, hobbled, but saddled and bridled. MoStegall led the animal back, and together the pair lifted the wounded man into the saddle. His lips moved, and Traquair, putting his ear to them, made out the words, whispered in broadest Scotch, "Gleg [quick] noo! ma' relief will be here in aboot a quatter of an 'oor!" The active little horse, led on either side, scrambled quickly down the slope. Just as the party reached the river at the bottom, a shout rang out

from the crag behind, followed by a shot, then another, then a little flight of them. The relief had arrived, and as the bullets whanged and buzzed far above, the drawn features of the poor horseman actually distorted further into a grin. He swayed down towards Traquair, "Ye'll hae to learn 'em, m' lord!" he whispered hoarsely. "Nay, 'twas not I who shot you," panted back Lord Donald, "but I am going to set you up again." Soon they were in safety, and a little later in camp, where the wounded man was comfortably installed in the Field Hospital.

Nothing of all this had got abroad. Traquair himself was not sufficiently proud of the incident to bruit it about, and as for McStegall, he had never volunteered a story in his life, and was not going to break the rule now. It might have remained long the private property of his master and himself, but for that old extractor of secrets, a taunt. In the evening all the older hands of the Scouts, McStegall amongst them, being gathered as usual around their special camp-fire, it occurred to Sandy McKellar to make merry at his crusty old crony's expense. "Well, well, Andrew," called, "'tis the eighteenth of September richt an' sure, but ye can no' lead us in the stagchantie as ye've done the last thirty year' (it had been for centuries the custom at Traquair Towers to celebrate the downfall of the first stag of the year by a Gaelic song groaned by all hands over its body laid out on the lawn);

he

"ye hae ma condolences, auld Andrew!" "Keep 'em, keep 'em, Andy," growled McStegall in reply; "dinna break the rule o' ye life and gie awa' something for naething! Dinna fash ye puir old head; I hae ma beastie fra' the hill a' richt,-ay, I hae ma beastie, and ye'll hae ye chantie!" His words aroused a chorus of amazement amongst his hearers. What! a beast? Was Andrew also, for the first time in his long career, making a a joke? Was he mad, or, less likely, fou? "A beast?" they shouted; "an' where, in the name o' John Barleycorn, does he lie?" "In the thirrd tent on the richt adoon the thirrd field-hospital," grunted the old fellow; "go an' spy, if ye dinna believe!" And they went and looked.

McPherson's hurt proved comparatively trifling after all. The bullet had punctured the lung, and the actual closeness of the range had rushed the lead so cleanly through, that it had begun to heal almost at once by first intention. Part of his story Lord Donald heard at once from McStegall. The man, a tenant of the Duke, and an underkeeper on the forest, had suddenly vanished from the district, no one knew exactly why, when Traquair was a small boy at school. The rest was told by McPherson himself during his his rapid convalescence. It appeared that the Duke, then young and foolish enough to go stalking alone, when out one day on the hill early in October, had

caught his big underkeeper red-handed in the very act of slaying a hind with calf a' foot, the unmentionable crime in the forest. An angry altercation had led to actual blows. "Ay, m' lord," narrated McPherson, "I fought ye father, just on the knobbie of Ben Hinish, where the ptarmigan nest; ye mind, Andrew?” turning to McStegall, who was present; "but 'twas none of my seekin'-the fightin' I mean

for he challenged and belled at me like a ruttin' stag, and there was no that much in the endin' o' it, either; he gie me twa stane, but he gie me also the shairpest and quickest left I aye saw on a mon. An' when 'twas over, and us twa lay pantin' amongst the whins, his Grace he said to me, 'A weel, Andy,' he said, 'ye'll jest hae the choice o' stannin' the law or quittin' the forest this varra day; which do ye tak?' 'Twas no that hard to make choice; it meant quittin' the glen any road, for which o' the lads wad speak with one wha had slain a hind? So I told his Grace, and he said, 'A' believe ye're richt, Andy, an' here's a twenty-pound note to pay yer way to Hell with.' And so a' flitted, Lord Donal', and sailed out here steerage, and became a citizen of this fusionless docken o' a clan, until the war came, and by then I had been so lang a darn't furriner that I didna' sae much mind servin', even had I the free will, which I hadna'. An' noo, m' lord, ye'll tak' me back to Traquair?-I thank ye, I thank ye!"