CHAPTER XI.

THE PHANTOM STAG.

But if he were so anxious about how he should sing (for his audience of one only) that old Scotch ballad, he was not acting very wisely, or else he had a sublime confidence in the soundness of his chest; for on his host’s offering him another day’s stalking, he cheerfully accepted the same; and that notwithstanding they had now fallen upon a period of extremely rough, cold, and wet weather.  Was this another piece of bravado, then—­undertaken to produce a favorable impression in a certain quarter—­or had the hunter’s hunger really got hold of him?  On the evening before the appointed raid, even the foresters looked glum; the western hills were ominous and angry, and the wind that came howling down the strath seemed to foretell a storm.  But he was not to be daunted; he said he would give up only when Roderick assured him that the expedition was quite impracticable and useless.

“I hear you are going after the deer to-morrow,” said the pretty Miss Georgie Lestrange to him, in the drawing-room after dinner, while Lady Sybil was performing her famous fantasia “The Voices of the Moonlight,” to which nobody listened but her own admiring self.  “And I was told all about that custom of making the stalker a little present on his setting out, for good-luck.  It was Honnor Cunyngham who did that for you last time, and I think it should be my turn to-morrow morning.”

“Oh, thank you!” said he; but “Thank you for nothing!” he said in his heart; for why should any frivolous trinket—­even when presented by this very charming and complaisant young damsel—­be allowed to interfere with the prerogative of Miss Cunyngham’s sacred talisman?

“I say,” continued the bright-eyed, ruddy-haired lass, “what do you and Honnor Cunyngham talk about all day long, when you are away on those fishing excursions?  Don’t you bore each other to death?  Oh, I know she’s rather learned, though she doesn’t bestow much of her knowledge upon us.  Well, I’m not going to say anything against Honnor, for she’s so awfully good-natured, you know; she allows her sisters-in-law to experiment on her as an audience, and she has always something friendly and nice to say, though I can guess what she thinks of it all.  Now, what do you two talk about all day long?”

“Well, there’s the fishing,” said he, “for one thing.”

“Oh, don’t tell me!” exclaimed this impertinent young hussy (while “The Voices of the Moonlight” moaned and mourned their mysterious regrets and despairs at the far end of the drawing-room).  “Don’t tell me!  Honnor Cunyngham is far too good-looking for you to go talking salmon to her all day long.  Very handsome I call her; don’t you?  She’s so distinguished, somehow—­so different from any one else.  Of course you don’t notice it up here so much, where she prides herself on roughing it—­you never met her in London?—­in London you should