'Blood upon the skein, Allan!'
Then the heart of the latter began to beat highly as the moment for shooting drew near, for after all their care and toil it was quite possible that a grouse might whirr up from the heather, and with a warning cry scare the stag to full speed.
'You take aim, Allan,' whispered Lord Aberfeldie, 'and I shall reserve my fire. It is years since you had a shot at a dun cow, my boy.'
Inch by inch the Master cautiously inserted his double-barrelled rifle between the stiff tufts of purple heather that fringed the bank of the hollow up which they had been creeping, and brought the sights to bear upon the beautiful and graceful animal that cropped the herbage, with his branching antlers lowered; and Allan, in the excitement of the moment, felt his pulses beating wildly.
'If I miss—if I fail!' he muttered.
'Tut—-there is no such word as fail!' replied his father, unconsciously quoting 'Richelieu.'
Allan drew a long breath, while his dark eye seemed to flash along the barrel, and fired. Bang went a couple of rifles in the distant corrie, but Aberfeldie and his son took no heed of them. The latter's single shot had sped true, piercing the stag above the left eye, and now it lay prone on the heather, tearing up tufts and sandy earth with its hoofs in the agonies of death.
Allan's skein-dhu was promptly in his hand; the stag was gralloched, and Dugald Glas, waving his bonnet, shouted loudly for Alister Bane and Hector Crubach (or lame Hector), two gillies, to bring up the pony, on which the dead animal was slung, and then the party set out for the place appointed for luncheon, as raid-day was now long since past.
'What the deuce are Stratherroch and Holcroft about?' exclaimed Lord Aberfeldie, while shading his eyes with his hand; and to their success in sport we shall refer in the next chapter.