Angus was very solemn about it. He was a lean anxious man, just over fifty, with a face not unlike a stag’s, amazingly fast on the hills, a finished cragsman, and with all the Highlander’s subtle courtesy. Kennedy, the second stalker, was of Lowland stock; his father had come to the North from Galloway in the days of the boom in sheep, and had remained as a keeper when sheep prices fell. He was a sturdy young fellow, apt to suffer on steep slopes on a warm day, but strong as an ox and with a better head than Angus for thinking out problems of weather and wind. Though he had the Gaelic, he was a true Lowlander, plainspoken and imperturbable. It was a contrast of new and old, for Kennedy had served in the War, and learned many things beyond the other’s ken. He knew, for example, how to direct your eye to the point he wanted, and would give intelligent directions like a battery observer, whereas with Angus it was always “D’ye see yon stone? Ay, but d’ye see another stone?”—and so forth. Kennedy, when we sat down to rest, would smoke a cigarette in a holder, while Angus lit the dottle in a foul old pipe.
In the first fortnight of August we had alternate days of rain, real drenching torrents, and the Aicill rose and let the fish up from the sea. There were few sea-trout that year, but there was a glorious run of salmon. Greenslade killed his first, and by the end of a week had a bag of twelve, while Mary, with the luck which seems to attend casual lady anglers, had four in one day to her own rod. Those were pleasant days, though there were mild damp afternoons when the midges were worse than tropical mosquitoes. I liked it best when a breeze rose and the sun was hot and we had all our meals by the waterside. Once at luncheon we took with us an iron pot, made a fire, and boiled a fresh-killed salmon “in his broo”—a device I recommend to anyone who wants the full flavour of that noble fish.
Archie Roylance arrived on August 16th, full of the lust of hunting. He reported that they had seen nothing remarkable in the way of birds at Flacksholm, but that David Warcliff had had great sport with the sea-trout. “There’s a good boy for you,” he declared. “First-class little sportsman, and to see him and his father together made me want to get wedded straight off. I thought him a bit hipped at Fosse, but the North Sea put him right, and I left him as jolly as a grig. By the way, what was the matter with him in the summer? I gathered that he had been seedy or something, and the old man can’t let him out of his sight. … Let’s get in Angus, and talk deer.”
Angus was ready to talk deer till all hours. I had fixed the 21st for the start of the season, though the beasts were in such forward condition that we might have begun four days earlier. Angus reported that he had already seen several stags clear of velvet. But he was inclined to be doleful about our neighbours.
“My uncle Alexander is past prayin’ for,” said Archie. “He lives for that forest of his, and he won’t have me there early in the season, for he says I have no judgment about beasts and won’t listen to the stalkers. In October, you see, he has me under his own eye. He refuses to let a stag be killed unless it’s a hummel or a diseased ancient. Result is, the place is crawlin’ with fine stags that have begun to go back and won’t perish till they’re fairly moulderin’. Poor notion of a stud has my uncle Alexander. … What about Haripol? Who has it this year?”
When he heard he exclaimed delightedly. “I know old Claybody. Rather a good old fellow in his way, and uncommon freehanded. Rum old bird, too! He once introduced his son to me as ‘The Honourable Johnson Claybody.’ Fairly wallows in his peerage. You know he wanted to take the title of Lord Oxford, because he had a boy goin’ up to Magdalen, but even the Heralds’ College jibbed at that. But he’ll never get up those Haripol hills. He’s a little fat puffin’ old man. I’m not very spry on my legs now, but compared to Claybody I’m a gazelle.”
“He’ll maybe have veesitors,” said Angus.
“You bet he will. He’ll have the Lodge stuffed with young men, for there are various Honourable Claybody daughters. Don’t fancy they’ll be much good on the hill, though.”
“They will not be good, Sir Archibald,” said the melancholy Angus. “There will have been some of them on the hill already. They will be no better than towrists.”
“Towrists” I should explain were the poison in Angus’s cup. By that name he meant people who trespassed on a deer forest during, or shortly before, the stalking season, and had not the good manners to give him notice and ask his consent. He distinguished them sharply from what he called “muntaneers,” a class which
