“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 they had first caught sight of the stags—­a much more wild and sombre landscape was this, with precipitous black crags overhanging a sullen and solitary loch that had not a bush or a tree along its lifeless shores.  As for Lionel, he fought along without repining.  His arms were soaking wet up to the elbows; his legs were in a like condition from the knee downward.  Then he was damp with perspiration; while ever and anon, when he had to lie prone in the moist grass, or crouch like a frog behind a rock, the cold wind from the hills sent a shiver down his spine or seemed to strike like an icy dagger through his chest.  But he took it all as part of the day’s work.  There was in his possession a little silver token that afforded him much content.  He would acquit himself like a man—­if he could; at any rate, he would not grumble.

After what seemed ages of this inconceivable torture, Lionel was immensely relieved to find the keeper, after a careful survey from the top of a mound to which he had crawled, motion with his hand to him to come up to his side.  This he did with the greatest circumspection, scarcely raising his head above the grass and heather; and then, when he had joined Roderick, he began to peer through the waving stalks and twigs just before his eyes.  Suddenly his gaze was arrested by certain brown tips—­tips that were moving; were these the stags’ horns, he asked himself, in a kind of bewilderment of fear?  There could be no doubt of it.  The beasts were now lying down—­he could not see their bodies—­but clearly enough he could make out their branching antlers, as they lazily moved their heads, or perhaps turned to flick a fly away.