Apart from the joyous exhilaration of shooting, and that out-door exercise so dear to every English gentleman, Vivian Hammersley felt all that which comes from the romantic beauty of his surroundings—the scenery of the Howe of the Mearns, which is a low champaign and highly cultivated country, studded with handsome mansions, and ornamented by rich plantations and thriving villages.
Ere long the open muirs were reached, and the hill-sides, the steep, purple ridges of which the sportsmen had to breast; and, keen sportsman though he was, Hammersley had soon to admit that grouse-shooting was the most fatiguing work he had yet encountered; but soon came the excitements of the first point, the first brood, and the first shot or two.
To the eye chiefly accustomed to brown partridges, grouse look dusky and even black, and they seem to hug the purple heather, but when one becomes accustomed to them they are as easy to knock over as the tame birds; and now the crack of the guns began to ring out along the hill-slopes.
Shafto and Hammersley were about twenty yards apart, and twice when a bird rose before the latter, it was brought down wounded but not killed by the former.
Hammersley felt that this was 'bad form,' as Shafto should not have fired, unless he had missed or passed it; but he only bit his lip and smiled disdainfully. Lord Fettercairn remarked the discourtesy, and added,
'Shafto, I do wish you would take an example from Captain Hammersley.'
'In what way?' grumbled Shafto.
'He kills his game clean—few birds run from him with broken wings and so forth.'
'I am glad to hit when I can,' said Shafto, whose mode of life in Devonshire had made him rather soft, and he was beginning to think that nerves of iron and lungs like a bagpipe were requisite for breasting up the hill-slopes, and then shoot straight at anything.
Hammersley worked away silently, neither looking to his right nor left, feeling that though several elements are requisite for 'sport,' the chief then was to kill as much grouse as possible in a given time, but was more than once irritated and discomposed by Shafto, and even young Kippilaw, shooting in a blundering way along the line even when the birds were not flying high; and he proceeded in a workmanlike way to bring down one bird as it approached, the next when it was past him, and so on.