staff for the short shooting-season; though this year the wages that were offered by Moray had tempted him to engage at the beginning of the summer.
Venables had got himself up in a kilt, which draped his lithe figure picturesquely enough; and as he strode forward, although there was a long day before them, he sprang from tussock to tussock on the damp ground like a roebuck. As for Leslie, a loose shooting-coat and baggy knickerbockers half served to conceal any superfluity of flesh. But if his companion cut out the running, Leslie seemed likely to stay tolerably well; and indeed he was no novice in pedestrianism. Both one and the other had done good work in the Alps; and Leslie, weight and size notwithstanding, which somewhat unfitted him for crawling after deer, had been one of the first to scale the Aiguille de Taléfre.
"You can't possibly reproach me with premature curiosity, Master Jack; but may I ask now, without indiscretion, what is the meaning of the rifle with which Peter is encumbered?"
"Certainly; and I owe you many apologies for not having anticipated your question. But there was something dramatically sensational in the blind confidence with which Sense was following the lead of Folly into the wilderness; and besides, the betting is a hundred to ten that the rifle may never be brought into requisition. You remember how Donald in his 'cracks' the other night turned the conversation on the goats of Balgarroch."
"Oh, that's what we're after! That's what sent us on this wild-goose – I beg pardon – on this wild-goat chase! For Donald, if I remember aright, remarked by way of postscript, that the goats were unapproachable; and the proof is, that the patriarch, if rumour is to be credited, may have been born anywhere between now and the rising of the '45."
"'Must have been born,' you mean to say. The older he is, the greater the certainty that he must be falling back by this time into his second childhood. And of course, so long as there was a deer on the hills, no one of the deer-stalkers has dreamed of going after him. Long impunity must have bred the confidence I hope to abuse."
"Say it is so. But going after a family-party of wild goats over the Braes of Balgarroch must be like looking for a lot of needles in a bundle of hay."
"I don't know that. Donald said that at this season, when the hill-grazing is fresh, they stick pretty much to the precipices to the west of Lochrosque; and somehow, and in spite of the Laird, I have a presentiment that we shall have a shot before the day is over. Anyhow, if I miss the mark, there is nobody to laugh; for I breathed nothing of any possible intentions to Glenconan, and Peter is much too idiotic to see anything. The secret is safe with you, I am sure, for I know that 'Brutus is an honourable man.'"
Brutus laughed, and silently assented. The walking each moment was becoming more severe, and both the men were inclined to husband their breath.
It was lucky indeed that they were in fair condition. Venables had scarcely turned a hair, though he began to go more like a human being than a chamois; and as for Leslie, if he showed greater signs of exertion, strength and pluck pulled him steadily through. They plunged through yielding peat-bogs up to the ankles, threading with many turns and precautions an
