ce
along the rocks close by them, started and seized Macleod's arm. What
the frightened eyes of the younger man seemed to see was a great white
and gray object lying on the rocks, and staring at him with huge black
eyes. At first it almost appeared to him to be a man with a grizzled and
hairy face; then he tried to think of some white beast with big black
eyes; then he knew. For the next second there was an unwieldy roll down
the rocks, and then a heavy splash in the water; and the huge gray seal
had disappeared. And there he stood helpless, with the boat-hook in his
hand.

"It is my usual luck," said he, in despair. "If I had had my rifle in my
hand, we should never have got within a hundred yards of the beast. But
I got an awful fright. I never before saw a live seal just in front of
one's nose like that."

"You would have missed him," said Macleod, coolly.

"At a dozen yards?"

"Yes. When you come on one so near as that, you are too startled to take
aim. You would have blazed away and missed."

"I don't think so," said Ogilvie, with some modest persistence. "When I
shot that stag, I was steady enough, though I felt my heart thumping
away like fun."

"There you had plenty of time to take your aim--and a rock to rest your
rifle on." And then he added: "You would have broken Hamish's heart,
Ogilvie, if you had missed that stag. He was quite determined you should
have one on your first day out; and I never saw him take such elaborate
precautions before. I suppose it was terribly tedious to you; but you
may depend on it it was necessary. There isn't one of the younger men
can match Hamish, though he was bred a sailor."

"Well," Mr. Ogilvie admitted, "I began to think we were having a great
deal of trouble for nothing; especially when it seemed as though the
wind were blowing half a dozen ways in the one valley."

"Why, man," Macleod said, "Hamish knows every one of those eddies just
as if they were all down on a chart. And he is very determined, too, you
shall have another stag before you go, Ogilvie; for it is not much
amusement we have been giving you since you came to us."

"That is why I feel so particularly jolly at the notion of having to go
back," said Mr. Ogilvie, with very much the air of a schoolboy at the
end of his holiday. "The day after to-morrow, too!"

"To-morrow, then, we will try to get a stag for you; and the day after
you can spend what time you can at the pools in Glen Muick."

These las