sently he was on his back on the heather, with
the telescope balanced as before. After a long and earnest scrutiny, he
offered the glass to Lionel.

"They're there," he said, "but in an ahfu' bad place for us."

Eagerly Lionel got hold of the telescope and tried to balance it as the
keeper had done; but either his hand was trembling, or the wind had a
purchase on the long tube, or he was unaccustomed to its use; at all
events he could make out nothing but nebulous and uncertain patches of
color.

"Tell me where they are," he said, quickly, as he put aside the glass.
"I have good eyes."

"Do you see the gray scar on the hillside yonder?--then right below that
the rocks--and then the open place--can you see them now? Ay, and
there's not a single hind with them--"

"They're all stags?" exclaimed Lionel, breathlessly.

"Every one," said Roderick. "And when there's no hinds with them, it is
easier to get at them, for they're not near so wary as the hinds; but
that is a bad place where they are feeding the now--a terrible bad
place. I'm thinking it is no use to try to get near them there; but they
will keep feeding on and on until they get over the ridge; and what we
will do now is we will chist go aweh down wind, and get round to them
from anither airt."

It was little that Lionel knew what was involved in this apparently
simple scheme. At first everything was easy enough; for, when they had
fallen back out of sight of the deer, they merely set forth upon a long
walk down wind, going erect, without any trouble. It is true that Lionel
in time began to think that the keeper, instead of having the deer in
mind, was bent on a pilgrimage into Cromarty or Sutherland, or perhaps
towards the shores of the Atlantic; but this interminable tramp was a
mere trifle compared with their labors when they began to go up wind
again. For now there was nothing but stooping and crawling and slouching
behind hillocks, up peat-hags, and through marshy swamps; while the heat
produced by all this painful toil was liable to a sudden chill whenever
a halt was called to enable Roderick to writhe his prostrate figure up
to the top of some slight eminence, where, raising his head inch by
inch, he once more informed himself of the whereabouts of the deer.
There seemed to be no end to this snake-like squirming along the ground
and creeping behind rocks and hillocks; in fact, they were now in a
quite different tract of country from that in which the