This was tremendously strong tobacco that Roderick had handed him, and yet, as it seemed to him, he had never smelt a sweeter fragrance perfuming the soft mountain air.  Nor did these appear grim and awful solitudes any longer; they were friendly solitudes, rather; as he sat and peacefully and joyously smoked, he studied every feature of them—­each rock and swamp and barren slope, every hill and corrie and misty mountain-top; and he knew that while life remained to him he would never forget this memorable scene—­with the slain stag in the foreground.  No, nor how could he ever forget that wan glare of sunlight that had come along the plateau where the deer were quietly feeding?—­he seemed to see again each individual blade of grass close to his face, as well as the noble quarry that had held him breathless.  And then he took out the bright little coin; surely Honnor Cunyngham could not object to his wearing it, seeing that it had proved itself such a potent charm?  He rejoiced that he had not been frightened off his expedition by tales of its monotonous sufferings and dire fatigues.  This was something better than arranging an out-of-door performance for a parcel of amateurs!  Stiff and sore he was, his clothes were mostly soaked and caked with mire, and he did not know what he had not done to his shins and knees and elbows; but he did not mind all that; Honnor Cunyngham was right—­as he rode down Strathaivron that evening towards the lodge, it would not be of fatigues and privations he would be thinking! it would be of the lordly stag left away up there in the hills, to be sent for and brought down in triumph the next day.

By the time they had got the stag conveyed to a place of concealment, and carefully covered over with heather, the afternoon was well advanced; then they set out for the little corrie in which the pony had been left.  But Lionel was now to discover that they had come much farther into these wilds than he had imagined; indeed, when they at length came upon the stolid and unconcerned Maggie, he did not in the least regret that it was a riding-saddle, not a deer-saddle, they had brought with them in the morning.  He had offered to walk these remaining eight miles in order to have the proud satisfaction of taking the stag home with them; now he was just as well content that it was he, and not the slain deer, that Maggie was to carry down to Strathaivron.  So he lit another cigarette, got into the saddle, and with a light heart set forth upon the long and tedious jog-jog down towards the region of comparative civilization.

Yet it was hardly so tedious, after all.  He was mentally going over again and again every point and incident of the day’s thrilling experiences; and now it seemed as if it were a long time since he had been squirming through the heather, with all his limbs aching, and his heart ready to burst.  He recalled that beautiful picture of the stags feeding on the lonely plateau; he wondered now that he was