sentry, had not his eyes open wide enough to perceive anything unusual in the demeanour of the officer and his henchman. "Goin' back to breakfast, likely, or to shoot a stone-buck," he mused, and as they passed out of sight around a rock he resumed his official stare at Nothing.

Once clear of the picquet, MoStegall and his companion, the former leading, found themselves about to emerge from the cover which hid them from their quarry. "Doon wi' us noo, for twa hundred yards, until we win the bit burn! whispered old Andrew, as if the far-off sentry could hear them. So they crawled, stomachs flat to the ground, worming a scratchy uncomfortable way through bristling gras.. Traquair had noted no "bit burn," but but soon, following McStegall's shiny nailed boot soles, he felt his head drooping and all his pockets apparently turning inside out as they steeply turned down hill, until an almost perpendicular dive landed them into a dusty trench of variable depth which descended fairly straight to the valley bottom. The ditch here was shoulder high, and McStegall, bareheaded, slowly raising his eyes, and no more, to the level of the brink, took

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prolonged stare at the enemy through the glasses. "A' richt," he muttered; "he's no' spied us, though we were farr too hasty. Cannily, noo, doon the burn!" Down the ditch they moved, now bending, now scuttling on all fours, now upright, straightening aching

backs and palsied leg joints, now crawling again like wounded crocodiles, according as the protecting bank raised or lowered or altogether ceased. Fortunately the course of the bed ran somewhat diagonally to the general fall of the ground, so that the sentry could never see entirely into it. Arrived at the bottom, they found themselves confronted at its junction with the main stream by a wide pool, almost the only one remaining after a season of drought. It was impossible to avoid it, for a detour on either side would lead over absolutely open beaches of pebble. Traquair gave a low whistle of despair. McStegall said nothing, but putting his watch between his teeth, signed to his companion to do the same. Then he led on straight into the water. This was of the convenient depth of some five feet, so that by bending their knees, throwing back their heads, the stalkers could keep their faces above and flush with the surface, parallel with which, and just clear of it, McStegall contrived to uplift the rifle. Thirty yards or so of icy wading followed, during which the upturned faces of the hunters seemed to be looking straight into that of the quarry, now some 800 feet almost perpendicularly above them on his rocky outcrop. Should he, for lack of anything better to do, turn his glasses upon the river, they must be discovered, for slowly, almost imperceptibly as they moved, the two pale visages were strange and apparent enough as they traversed the

glassy pool like jelly-fish floating across a tank. The behaviour of the two men 88 they sidled over was typical. Whilst Traquair glared upward at his intended victim with a stare of mingled apprehension and anticipation, McStegall, unwilling to lose the most atomic aid to concealment, closed his eyes altogether, lest their brightness should betray him. Arrived at the other side, McStegall, drying the dripping glass, poked it between the fronds of fern growing on the edge of the fourfoot bank, and long and anxiously scrutinised the sentry. But the sentry was not interested in the river; he was not, in fact, interested in anything. Once, indeed, he did raise a perfunctory field-glass against the distant camp, an act which nearly cost the old Scotsman a chuckle, which was, however, quickly changed to a wink downward at his companion prone at his side.

Now for a time the task became easier. A short orawl amongst the ropy bracken stems quickly brought the pair so directly beneath their eyried quarry, that they became invisible to him. Taking infinite care to avoid stones and sticks, the kicking of either of which would have sounded like a fogsignal in the still air, they could now walk erect up the grassy bouldered slope which led to the base of the crag. Soon they were beneath its towerlike wall, and only the last stage of the attack lay before them. It presented a pretty problem. Two corries, gullies as steeply slanting and as bare

as the mud-shoots of a dredger, ran heavenward, leading up around either side of the topmost orag. Either was equally serviceable for approach, and equally risky, for both opened into the view of the sentry at some 300 yards below his perch. Traquair looked inquiringly at McStegall. The latter, wetting a forefinger, held it aloft. Lord Donald, though he knew the danger, could not repress a low laugh. "Come! you old fool," he whispered; "no need to bother about the wind with this beast!" "Nay, but we'll use him like a gentleman, though he be none," growled Andrew in reply; "'tis the eastern airt,

the western corrie for us! Come awa' noo! But tak' the rifle-ye'll no' be lang for the shot.' Traquair took the weapon, and smiled again as he examined it. It was a 303 Lee - Metford, with magazine, charger-guides, and all complete, but a very different affair from the regulation pattern issued to the Scouts on mobilisation. Short in the barrel, which was unencumbered with any wood-casing, its magazine holding five instead of ten cartridges, with a V backsight as sharp as a hatchet stroke, and a bead foresight as cleanly rounded as a tiny billiard-ball, the tool weighed no more than seven pounds, and came to the shoulder as patly as a gun. "Ay," muttered McStegall, "syne they'd no' let me sarve as a Scout" (he had been refused on account of age), "d'ye think I was going to carry aboot their damt blunderbuss?" Traquair, squatting on his

haunches, sighted the weapon for a moment on a distant stump. "Is it in good order, Andrew?" he whispered. The old man's only reply was a scowl, and Traquair bit his lip. "Sorry, Andrew, sorry, old man. Come on now!"

Cautiously they crept around the base of the crag, and wormed into the mouth of the left-hand corrie, then, bent double, step by step up its roof-like slope, keeping close beneath its wall. Quarter of an hour passed whilst they made good some two hundred yards. Then MoStegall signalled a halt. "We can see him from here," he breathed. Motioning Traquair to lie down, he put the glass to his eyes, and by eighths of an inch at a time raised his face above the parapet. So close were they now, that through the glasses the unconscious sentry seemed to be alongside, and even the

hardened old stalker could not forbear a far longer spy than he had ever allowed himself before so near "the shot." On the topmost rock before him sat a vast, bearded old man, his rifle between his knees. On his grizzled head rested a huge terai hat, from which stuck out two long, straight feathers, like those from a pheasant's tail. McStegall, now sufficiently excited to be instinctively possessed by confused thoughts of "heads," particularly noted these feathers, and a grin creased his parchment visage as he subsided as noiselessly as the mercury in a thermom

eter down to his companion. "He's nobbut a 'switch,' "1 he whispered into Lord Donald's ear, "but a grreat, heavybodied beast withal, eighteen stone 'clean' at least!" Traquair gripped the rifle, but McStegall held up a prohibiting finger, then pointed farther up the corrie. He wished to gain another hundred yards if possible. But no sooner had they begun to crawl than something happened which made their hearts tap the ground beneath them like the sticks of a drum. A small bustard, fluttering up under the leader's very nose, bustled off noisily with loud bubbling cries which awoke the echoes on the mountain. "Spotted for certain!" croaked Traquair. "Damn the grouse!" But McStegall pressed him to the ground with a hand of lead and iron. ten agonising minutes they lay motionless as corpses. A sharp stone drove into Andrew's forearm, but like a very stone he bore the agony, feeling the blood break out when the skin broke. Traquair's face lay upon the stalker's iron-bound heel, and a great bruise began to throb and burn at his cheekbone. They heard the sentry start to his feet, and listened in agony lest footsteps should follow. They heard the clank of his rifle-bolt as he wrenched a round from the magazine into the chamber. Finally, after a long wait, they heard the sound they most desired, the heavy swag as, reassured, he dropped himself down again on

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turned the body in order to make the binding fast on the other side. As he did so, the hat fell from the ghastly face. A loud shriek from McStegall stopped the beating of Traquair's heart, and even caused the sufferer's eyes to open slowly. "What is it, Andrew?" "Why," gasped the stalker, "why, if it isna' auld Andy McPherson wha flitted fra' the glen ane nicht fifteen year back, and has no' bin heerd of syne! Andy! D'ye mind me, Andrew McStegall fra' Knochkily Cottage, nigh the march? Andy!" "Never mind now," interposed the amazed Traquair, "let's get him away." The belt was quickly tightened over both wounds, and Lord Donald and Traquair were about to attempt to lift the huge bulk, when the man, who was plainly not so grievously hurt as it seemed, pointed backward towards a dip in the rock behind his post. McStegall looked at him suspiciously for a moment, then cautiously moved in the direction indicated, and there, surely enough, stood the sentry's horse, hobbled, but saddled and bridled. McStegall led the animal back, and together the pair lifted the wounded man into the saddle. His lips moved, and Traquair, putting his ear to them, made out the words, whispered in broadest Scotch, "Gleg [quick] noo! ma' relief will be here in aboot a quatter of an 'oor!" The active little horse, led on either side, scrambled quickly down the slope. Just as the party reached the river at the bottom, a shout rang out

from the crag behind, followed by a shot, then another, then a little flight of them. The relief had arrived, and as the bullets whanged and buzzed far above, the drawn features of the poor horseman actually distorted further into a grin. He swayed down towards Traquair, "Ye'll hae to learn 'em, m' lord!" he whispered hoarsely. "Nay, 'twas not I who shot you," panted back Lord Donald, "but I am going to set you up again." Soon they were in safety, and a little later in camp, where the wounded man was comfortably installed in the Field Hospital.

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Nothing of all this had got abroad. Traquair himself was not sufficiently proud of the incident to bruit it about, and as for McStegall, he had never volunteered a story in his life, and was not going to break the rule now. It might have remained long the private property of his master and himself, but for that extractor of secrets, a taunt. In the evening all the older hands of the Scouts, McStegall amongst them, being gathered as usual around their special camp-fire, it occurred to Sandy McKellar to make merry at his crusty old crony's expense. "Well, well, Andrew," he called, "'tis the eighteenth of September richt an' sure, but ye can no' lead us in the stagchantie as ye've done the last thirty year" (it had been for centuries the custom at Traquair Towers to celebrate the downfall of the first stag of the year by a Gaelic song groaned by all hands over its body laid out on the lawn);