“How does he harden, Fred?” cried Chisholm, bursting all unannounced one morning into the dining-room of a North Wales hotel, where Freeman and young Willoughby were just putting the finishing touches to a glorious breakfast, with boiled eggs and mountain trout. Chisholm had been absent for a whole week. “How does he harden?”
“I think he is getting on famously. He’s curing nicely.”
“I declare,” said Frank, laughing, “you talk of me as if I were a ham or something; and Chisholm asks about me in the same tone of voice he would use if he wanted to know how your meerschaum coloured.”
“’Cause we’re interested in you, dear boy,” said Chisholm, feeling Frank’s arm. “But, bless my heart,” he continued, “there is a biceps for you; why, it’s as hard as a hawser! And there’s a sunburnt face for you! Waiter, bring the beef. And what are you doing, boys?”
“Well,” said Fred, “you know we’ve been two months now under canvas, so we thought we would try a week of civilisation. But we’ve had rare sport enough, fishing in river and fishing in lake, and shooting almost whatever we came across—rabbits, leverets, pigeons, plovers, anything.”
“Bad boys,” said Chisholm. “But never mind, we’re off to-morrow.”
“Where away?”
“To the Highlands, the stern Scottish Highlands,” said Chisholm. “I’m promised a week among the deer. You’re hard enough for that now, Frank.”
“What a ubiquitous trio we are, to be sure!” said Fred.
They certainly seemed so, reader; for two days after the foregoing conversation they were dining at a quiet little hotel in Beauley, and by four of the clock next morning they were on their way to the house of Duncan McPhee, the head keeper of the great forest of Cairntree, one of the wildest tracts of country in the wild North. Though termed a forest, it is only partially wooded; for gigantic hills, bare and rugged, tower skywards every here and there from amidst the pine-trees, and there are, too, vast tracts of bare brae or moorland, covered only with heather, the home of the grouse and the ptarmigan. Deer abound in this forest in countless herds; but, saving the houses of the keepers, you might journey for days in all directions without seeing the smoke from a single habitation.