Nor had Peter boasted vainly of his wood lore, for he led them by so direct a way that, before they came to the place of flowers, the expedition—except the two little chaps, whom Speug sent round in Nestie's charge, to a selected rendezvous as being next door to babies—had climbed five dykes, all with loose stones, fought through three thickets very prickly indeed, crawled underneath two hedges, crossed three burns, one coming up to the knees, and mired themselves times without number. Cosh had jostled against Speug in leaping from one dry spot to another and come down rolling in the mud, which made his appearance from behind wonderful; Speug, in helping Thomas John out of a very entangling place, had been so zealous that the seat had been almost entirely detached from Thomas John's trousers, and although Mr. Byles had done his best with pins, the result was not edifying; his brother's straw hat had fallen in the exact spot where Speug landed as he jumped from a wall, and was of no further service, and so the younger Dowbiggin—"who is so refined in his ways," as his mother used to say—wore as his headgear a handkerchief which had been used for cleaning the mud from his clothes. Upon Mr. Byles, whom fate might have spared, misfortunes had accumulated. His trousers had been sadly mangled from the knee downwards as he crawled through a hole, and had to be wound round his legs with string, and although Speug had pulled his cap out of a branch, he had done his work so hastily as to leave the peak behind, and he was so clumsy, with the best intentions, that he allowed another branch to slip, which caught Mr. Byles on the side of the head and left a mark above his eye, which distinctly suggested a prizefight to anyone not acquainted with that gentleman's blameless character. Peter himself had come unscathed from the perils of land and water, save a dash of mud here and there and a suspicion of wet about his feet, which shows how bad people fare better than good. The company was so bedraggled and discouraged that their minds did not seem set on wild flowers, and in these circumstances Peter, ever obliging and thoughtful, led the botanists to a pleasant glade, away from thickets and bogs, where the pheasants made their home and swarmed by hundreds. Mr. Byles was much cheered by this change of environment, and grew eloquent on the graceful shape and varied plumage of the birds. They were so friendly that they gathered round the party, which was not wonderful, as a keeper fed them every day, but which Mr. Byles explained was due to the instinct of the beautiful creatures, "who know, my dear boys, that we love them." He enlarged on the cruelty of sport, and made the Dowbiggins promise that they would never shoot pheasants or any other game, and there is no reason to doubt that they kept their word, as they did not know one end of a gun from another, and would no sooner have dared to fire one than they would have whistled on Sunday. A happy thought occurred to Mr. Byles, and he suggested that they should now have their lunch and feed the birds with the fragments. He was wondering also whether it would be wrong to snare one of the birds in the net, just to hold it in the hand and let it go again.
"They were so friendly that they gathered round the party."
When things had come to this pass—and he never had expected anything so good—Speug withdrew unobtrusively behind a clump of trees, and then ran swiftly to a hollow where Nestie was waiting with the juniors.
"Noo, my wee men," said Peter to the innocents, "div ye see that path? Cut along it as hard as ye can leg, and it 'ill bring you to the Muirtown Road, and never rest till ye be in your own houses. For Byles and these Dowbiggins are carryin' on sic a game wi' Lord Kilspindie's pheasants that I'm expectin' to see them in Muirtown jail before nicht. Ye may be thankful," concluded Peter piously, "that I savit ye from sic company."
"Nestie," Peter continued, when the boys had disappeared, "I've never clypit (told tales) once since I cam to the Seminary, and it's no' a nice job, but div ye no' think that the head keeper should know that poachers are in the preserves?"
"It's a d-duty, Peter," as they ran to the keeper's house, "especially when there's a g-gang of them and such b-bad-looking fellows—v-vice just written on their faces. It's horried to see boys so young and so w-wicked."
"What young prodigals are yon comin' skelpin' along, as if the dogs were aifter them?" and the head keeper came out from the kennels. "Oh, it's you, Speug—and what are you doin' in the woods the day? there's no eggs now." For sporting people are a confederacy, and there was not a coachman or groom, or keeper or ratcatcher, within twelve miles of Muirtown, who did not know Mr. McGuffie senior, and not many who did not also have the acquaintance of his hopeful son.
"Nestie and me were just out for a run to keep our wind richt, an' we cam on a man and three boys among the pheasants in the low park."