the life of birds and beasts--laws yet unwritten in any language. He
finds all living things pursuing their destiny by the light of customs
that appeal as strongly to them as ours to us, and learns to know that the
order and dignity of the lower forms of life are not less remarkable in
their way than the phenomena associated with our own.

To me, the whirring of a covey of sand-grouse or partridges could express
little more than the swift passage of birds to a place of security. To the
man who grew almost as a part of the forest, the movement was something
well defined, clearly initiated, and the first step in a sequence that he
could trace without hesitation. One part of the forest might be the same
as another to the casual rider, or might at best vary in its purely
picturesque quality. To the long trained eye, on the other hand, it was a
place that would or would not be the haunt of certain beasts or birds at
certain hours of the day, by reason of its aspect with regard to the sun,
its soil, cover, proximity to the river or other source of water supply,
its freedom from certain winds and accessibility to others, its distance
from any of the tracks that led to the country beyond the forest and were
frequented at certain seasons of the year. The trained hunter reads all
this as in a book, but the most of us can do no more than recognise the
writing when it has been pointed out to us.

[Illustration: HOUSE-TOPS, MOGADOR]

So it happened that my morning ride with the hardy hunter, whose
achievements bulk next to those of the late Sir John Drummond Hay in the
history of Moorish sport, had an interest that did not depend altogether
upon the wild forest paths through which he led the way. He told me how
at daybreak the pack of cross-bred hounds came from garden, copse, and
woodland, racing to the steps of the Palm Tree House, and giving tongue
lustily, as though they knew there was sport afoot. One or two grizzled
huntsmen who had followed every track in the Argan Forest were waiting in
the patio for his final instructions, and he told them of hoof prints that
had revealed to his practised eye a "solitaire" boar of more than ordinary
size. He had tracked it for more than three hours on the previous day,
past the valley where our tents were set, and knew now where the lair was
chosen.

"He has been lying under an argan tree, one standing well away from the
rest at a point where the stream turns sharply, about a mile from