CHAPTER II.
HAWKE HOLCROFT.
The process of creeping in serpent fashion over sharp-pointed heather, rough stones, and occasionally in the bed of a mountain stream, as we have already described, proved intensely tiresome and distasteful to a 'man about town' like Mr. Hawke Holcroft, who could not entirely conceal his genuine disgust thereat, and at the slowness of the whole affair, though reminded by Dugald's son Angus, a smart young under-keeper, of the big hart of Benmore, which was stalked for seven long summer days before it was killed.
'But, for the Lord's sake, sir, keep quiet,' whispered Angus. 'We are now close on one of the finest of Macgilony's dun cows.'
'I see no dun cow!' grumbled Holcroft.
'He means yonder deer,' whispered Cameron, a fair-haired and pleasant-looking fellow. 'Macgilony was a famous hunter in the olden time, and his dun cows, as he called them, were the red deer of the Grampians.'
But to Holcroft, whose idea of hunting the stag was to have a scared and bewildered creature—a fallow deer, fed on oats and hay, perhaps—cast loose from a game-cart in a smooth, grassy park, the perseverance, courage, and labour required for stalking in the Highlands seemed a simple waste of time and an inconceivable bore.
'Stop for a minute,' whispered Angus, as they crept up the wind; 'the stag can smell with more than its nostrils.'
As the stoppage took place directly in the bed of a brawling burn, where they all lay on their stomachs, Holcroft not unnaturally asked, with no small irritation, what he meant; and the wiry young Highlander, who was whiskered and moustached to such an extent that, with his shaggy eyebrows, he somewhat resembled a Skye terrier in visage, explained his theory—no uncommon one, though, of course, not admitted by naturalists—that the red deer can both smell and breathe through the curious aperture beneath each eye, even if their heads are immersed in water when in the act of drinking.
'Dioul!' muttered Angus, as they crept forward again, but on dry heather this time, 'we can't be too cautious, whateffer! A deer's eye is as keen as an eagle's, and his nose acute as that of a foumart.'
'The first shot shall be yours, Holcroft,' said Cameron. 'I shall reserve my fire. He seems a powerful animal, and, if you only wound him, we may have the devil to pay!'