“Well, it is all arranged. There will be you, Sandie, Maggie May here, my man Stuart, and my simple self.”
“And me,” added Willie, with small regard for grammar.
“Well, now, as a friend,” said Sandie, “I’m going to be very straightforward. You remember your last sporting venture, and the somewhat original way you loaded your gun? Well, I think that this time you had better stay at home, Willie, and talk to my mother and Elsie.”
“I’ve got a new gun,” said Willie doggedly. “You’ve only to put in a cartridge and hold it out, and she goes off beautifully.”
“Yes; and perhaps shoots your neighbour.”
“Sandie M‘Crae, first Bursar of Marischal College, I’m going. That is decided.”
Sandie sighed.
“A wilful man must have his way,” he said.
The white or mountain hare, reader, is found plentifully in Norway and among our Scottish hills. It is not white all summer, but only changes to that colour when winter comes, a kind of provision of nature to hide it from its enemies, the fox and the eagle, and probably the great owl.
Its life is a hard one among the frozen hills in winter. Oftentimes its poor paws will be found skinned and bleeding from scratching the hard ground in order to procure a little food. They are usually stalked when snow is on the ground, their footsteps being followed, so that dogs are not really necessary.