"Oh, stuff and nonsense!" the young man cried, scornfully. "Do you think we are children! I tell you, we have caught him at last; and wherever the rest of the gang have sneaked off to, he is bound to come along here and face it out. Yes, he is coming: I can see he is moving this way. Very well, Frank, you have the dogs uncoupled now, and begin to shoot back home: I'm going to meet my gentleman—and I will take my gun with me, just to keep a wholesome check on insolence."
"You will not," said Meredyth, with decision—for he knew not whither this young man's obvious wrath and enmity might not lead him. "I will wait here with you: whoever that is, he is clearly coming this way."
"Why, of course he must!" was the rejoinder. "He sees he is caught: what else is there left for him but to come along and try to put some kind of face on it?" Then presently he exclaimed: "Well, of all the effrontry that I ever beheld! He is carrying a gun under his arm!—how's that for coolness?"
"I am not thinking it is a gun, sir," said the tall, brown-bearded keeper; "it is more like a steeck."
"Yes, it is a stick, Fred," Meredyth put in, after a moment.
"Oh, why should he have a gun? What does he want with a gun?" the young man said, without being disconcerted for a moment. "He has only to direct the operations of his confederates. A stick?—very likely!—the master-poacher doesn't want to be encumbered with a gun!"
And so they waited. It was a singular scene for the Twelfth of August on the side of a Highland hill: no ranging of dogs, no cracking of breechloaders, no picking up of a bird here and there from the thick heather, but a small group, standing silent and constrained, and dimly aware that pent-up human passions were about to burst forth amid these vast and impressive solitudes. Young Ross of Heimra—for it was unmistakably he—came leisurely along; his attention was evidently fixed on the sportsmen; perhaps he was wondering that they did not let loose the dogs and get to work. But as he drew nearer he must have perceived that they were awaiting his approach; and so—with something of interrogation and surprise in his look—he came up to them.
"I hope you have had good sport," said Fred Stanley.
Donald Ross stared: there was something in the young man's tone that seemed to strike him.
"I—I don't quite understand," said he.