ld
flowers, and in these circumstances Peter, ever obliging and thoughtful,
led the botanists to a pleasant glade, away from thickets and bogs,
where the pheasants made their home and swarmed by hundreds. Mr. Byles
was much cheered by this change of environment, and grew eloquent on the
graceful shape and varied plumage of the birds. They were so friendly
that they gathered round the party, which was not wonderful, as a keeper
fed them every day, but which Mr. Byles explained was due to the
instinct of the beautiful creatures, "who know, my dear boys, that we
love them." He enlarged on the cruelty of sport, and made the Dowbiggins
promise that they would never shoot pheasants or any other game, and
there is no reason to doubt that they kept their word, as they did not
know one end of a gun from another, and would no sooner have dared to
fire one than they would have whistled on Sunday. A happy thought
occurred to Mr. Byles, and he suggested that they should now have their
lunch and feed the birds with the fragments. He was wondering also
whether it would be wrong to snare one of the birds in the net, just to
hold it in the hand and let it go again.

[Illustration: "THEY WERE SO FRIENDLY THAT THEY GATHERED ROUND THE
PARTY."]

When things had come to this pass--and he never had expected anything so
good--Speug withdrew unobtrusively behind a clump of trees, and then ran
swiftly to a hollow where Nestie was waiting with the juniors.

"Noo, my wee men," said Peter to the innocents, "div ye see that path?
Cut along it as hard as ye can leg, and it 'ill bring you to the
Muirtown Road, and never rest till ye be in your own houses. For Byles
and these Dowbiggins are carryin' on sic a game wi' Lord Kilspindie's
pheasants that I'm expectin' to see them in Muirtown jail before nicht.
Ye may be thankful," concluded Peter piously, "that I savit ye from sic
company."

"Nestie," Peter continued, when the boys had disappeared, "I've never
clypit (told tales) once since I cam to the Seminary, and it's no' a
nice job, but div ye no' think that the head keeper should know that
poachers are in the preserves?"

"It's a d-duty, Peter," as they ran to the keeper's house, "especially
when there's a g-gang of them and such b-bad-looking fellows--v-vice
just written on their faces. It's horried to see boys so young and so
w-wicked."

"What young prodigals are yon comin' skelpin' along, as if the dogs were
aifter them?" and the head keepe