ere was my friend, sure
enough; moreover, he was playing a very respectable trout. But he was
fishing on the near side of the loch, and though I had quite a distinct
view of his back, and indeed of all his attenuated form, I was as far as
ever from recognising him, or guessing where, if anywhere, I had seen him
before. I now determined to stalk him; but this was not too easy, as
there is literally no cover on the hillside except a long march dyke of
the usual loose stones, which ran down to the loch-side, and indeed three
or four feet into the loch, reaching it at a short distance to the right
of the angler. Behind this I skulked, in an eagerly undignified manner,
and was just about to climb the wall unobserved, when two grouse got up,
with their wild "cluck cluck" of alarm, and flew down past the angler and
over the loch. He did not even look round, but jerked his line out of
the water, reeled it up, and set off walking along the loch-side. He was
making, no doubt, for the little glen up which I fancied that he must
have retreated on the first occasion when saw him. I set off walking
round the tarn on my own side--the left side--expecting to anticipate
him, and that he must pass me on his way up the little burnside. But I
had miscalculated the distance, or the pace. He was first at the
burnside; and now I cast courtesy and everything but curiosity to the
winds, and deliberately followed him. He was a few score of yards ahead
of me, walking rapidly, when he suddenly climbed the burnside to the
left, and was lost to my eyes for a few moments. I reached the place,
ascended the steep green declivity and found myself on the open
undulating moor, with no human being in sight!

The grass and heather were short. I saw no bush, no hollow, where he
could by any possibility have hidden himself. Had he met a Boojum he
could not have more "softly and suddenly vanished away."

I make no pretence of being more courageous than my neighbours, and, in
this juncture, perhaps I was less so. The long days of loneliness in
waste Glen Aline, and too many solitary cigarettes, had probably injured
my nerve. So, when I suddenly heard a sigh and the half-smothered sound
of a convulsive cough-hollow, if ever a cough was hollow--hard by me, at
my side as it were, and yet could behold no man, nor any place where a
man might conceal himself--nothing but moor and sky and tufts of
rushes--then I turned away, and walked down the glen: not