Away through the dripping woodlands went Rory, Ralph, and Allan, in pursuit of game. Seth was to spend the day in fishing, for ere long the waters would be frozen over, and but few fish to be had, so all those that had been taken during the past week had been carefully salted, dried in smoke, and stored away.
With our three heroes this afternoon went a party of men with a rudely-constructed sledge, to bring back a load of logs for the general store.
“Who is the laziest of us three, I wonder?” said Ralph, as soon as they had got to the high ground, and the men had commenced to wood.
“Oh, I am, I think,” said Allan. “That leapfrog business is too much for a fat old fellow like me.”
“Very well,” said Ralph, “for once in a way we’ll grant that you are right, so you just stop and keep the ‘b’ars’ from the working party, and Rory and I will go down to the creek and see if we can’t find a duck or two.”
“All right,” said Allan; and down he sat on a fallen tree, and pulling a book from his pocket he began to read. So Allan sat there reading, and some fifty or sixty yards beneath him the men worked, singing and laughing as they plied the axe and saw. A whole half-hour was thus passed.
“This is slow work,” he thought at last, placing the book in his pocket. “I’ll creep quietly over to that bit of jungle—I’m sure to get a shot at something.”
If there was anything to shoot in the jungle the wind was all in his favour. He was down to leeward.
When he neared the thicket he threw himself on his hands and knees, and approaching, entered with caution.
There is no sport in the world a Scottish Highlander loves so much as that of deer-stalking. Is it any wonder, then, that when he found himself within fifty yards of a tall an tiered red deer his heart jumped for joy?