MacRummle was wonderfully patient. He said nothing. He merely replaced his glasses and looked. The rabbit was gone. Several surrounding rabbits saw it go, but did not follow its example. They evidently felt themselves safe.
Proceeding cautiously onward, the sportsman again caught sight of one of the multitude that surrounded him. It was seated on the edge of its burrow, ready for retreat. Alas! for that rabbit, if MacRummle had been an average shot, armed with a shot gun. But it was ignorant, and with the characteristic presumption of ignorance, it sat still. The sportsman took a careful and long—very long—aim, and fired! The rabbit’s nose pointed to the world’s centre, its tail to the sky, and when the smoke cleared away, it also was gone.
“Fallen into its hole! Dead, I suppose,” was the remark with which the sportsman sought to comfort himself. A bullet-mark on a rock, however, two feet to the left of the hole, and about a foot too high, shook his faith a little in this view.
It was impossible, however, that a man should expend so much ammunition in a region swarming with his particular prey without experiencing something in the shape of a fluke. He did, after a time, get one shot which was effectual. A young rabbit sat on the top of a mound looking at him with an air of impudence which is sometimes associated with extreme youth. A fat old kinsman—or woman—was seated in a hollow some distance farther on. MacRummle fired at the young one, missed it, and shot the kinsman through the heart. The disappointment of the old man when he failed to find the young one, and his joy on discovering the kinsman, we leave to the reader’s imagination.
Thus he went on, occasionally securing something for the pot, continually alarming the whole rabbit fraternity, and disgusting the eagle, which watched him from a safe distance in the ambient atmosphere above.
By degrees he worked his way along till he came to the neighbourhood of the place where poor John Barret sat in meditative dejection. Although near, however, the two friends could neither see nor get at each other, being separated by an impassable gulf—the one being in a crevice, as we have said, not far from the foot of the cliff, the other hidden among the crags near the summit. Thus it came to pass that although Barret knew of MacRummle’s position by his noise, the latter was quite ignorant of the presence of the former.
“This is horrible!” muttered the youth in his crevice below.
“Now I call this charming!” exclaimed the old man on his perch above.
Such is life—viewed from different standpoints! Ay, and correctly estimated, too, according to these different standpoints; for the old man saw only the sunny surrounding of the Present, while the young one gazed into the gloomy wreck of the Future.
Being somewhat fatigued, MacRummle betook himself to a sequestered ledge among the cliffs, and sat down under a shrub to rest. It chanced to be a well concealed spot. He remained quietly there for a considerable time, discussing with himself the relative advantages of fishing and shooting. It is probable that his sudden disappearance and his prolonged absence induced the eagle to imagine that he had gone away, for that watchful bird, after several circlings on outstretched and apparently motionless wings, made a magnificent swoop downwards, and again resumed its floating action in the lower strata of its atmospheric world. There it devoted its exclusive attention to the young man, whose position was clearly exposed to its view.