While down-stairs his father was angrily walking up and down his study.
“As many days as he likes for the rest of his life!” he exclaimed fiercely. “Idiot—ass that I have been, and that I am, to offer that which at any hour may belong to some one else.”
“Well,” he added, after a pause, “folly receives its punishments, and the greatest of all follies is to game.”
Chapter Twenty Three.
The Stag Max did not shoot.
“I say, Max!” said Kenneth one day, as they sat at either end of a boat, whipping away at the surface of the rippling water of one of the inland lochs, up to which the said boat had been dragged years before, upon rough runners like a sleigh, partly by the ponies, partly by hand labour. Scoodrach was seated amidships, rowing slowly, and every now and then tucking his oar under his leg, to give his nose a rub, and grumble something about “ta flee.”
This was on the occasion when the fly Max was throwing came dangerously near hooking into the gristle of the young gillie’s most prominent feature.
Kenneth did not finish his sentence, for just then he hooked a trout which gave him a fair amount of play before it was brought alongside, where Scoodrach, who had ceased rowing, was ready with the landing-net.