l the stags in Christendom were there. I
know what it is; I have had enough of it in my younger days."

"My dear fellow," Macleod said, seriously, "you must not talk here as if
you could do what you liked. It is not what you wish to do, or what you
don't wish to do; it is what Hamish orders to have done. Do you think I
would dare to tell Hamish what we must do to-morrow?"

"Very well, then, I will see Hamish myself; I dare say he remembers me."

And he did see Hamish that evening, and it was arranged between them
that if the morning looked threatening, they would leave the deer
alone, and would merely take the lower-lying moors in the immediate
neighborhood of Castle Dare. Hamish took great care to impress on the
young man that Macleod had not yet taken a gun in his hand, merely that
there should be a decent bit of shooting when his guest arrived.

"And he will say to me, only yesterday," observed Hamish,
confidentially--"it wass yesterday itself he wass saying to me, 'Hamish,
when Mr. Ogilvie comes here, it will be only six days or seven days he
will be able to stop, and you will try to get him two or three stags.
And, Hamish'--this is what he will say to me--'you will pay no heed to
me, for I hef plenty of the shooting whatever, from the one year's end
to the other year's end, and it is Mr. Ogilvie you will look after.' And
you do not mind the rain, sir? It is fine warm clothes you have got
on--fine woollen clothes you have, and what harm will a shower do?"

"Oh, I don't mind the rain, so long as I can keep moving--that's the
fact, Hamish," replied Mr. Ogilvie; "but I don't like lying in wet
heather for an hour at a stretch. And I don't care how few birds there
are, there will be plenty to keep us walking. So you remember me, after
all, Hamish?"

"Oh ay, sir," said Hamish, with a demure twinkle in his eye. "I mind
fine the time you will fall into the water off the rock in Loch na
Keal."

"There, now," exclaimed Mr. Ogilvie. "That is precisely what I don't see
the fun of doing, now that I have got to man's estate, and have a
wholesome fear of killing myself. Do you think I would lie down now on
wet sea-weed, and get slowly soaked through with the rain for a whole
hour, on the chance of a seal coming on the other side of the rock? Of
course when I tried to get up I was as stiff as a stone. I could not
have lifted the rifle if a hundred seals had been there. And it was no
wonder at all I slipped down into the wate