"Frankly, then, Stuart," said he, "I don't want you to make her
acquaintance as an actress."

"Oh, very well," said he, not greatly disappointed. "Perhaps it is
better. You see, I may be questioned at Castle Dare. Have you considered
that matter?"

"Oh no," Macleod said, lightly and cheerfully, "I have had time to
consider nothing as yet. I can scarcely believe it to be all real. It
takes a deal of hard thinking to convince myself that I am not
dreaming."

But the true fashion in which Macleod showed his gratitude to his friend
was in concealing his great reluctance on going down with him into
Sussex. It was like rending his heart-strings for him to leave London
for a single hour at this time. What beautiful confidences, and tender,
timid looks, and sweet, small words he was leaving behind him in order
to go and shoot a lot of miserable pheasants! He was rather gloomy when
he met the major at Victoria Station. They got into the train; and away
through the darkness of the November afternoon they rattled to Three
Bridges; but all the eager sportsman had gone out of him, and he had
next to nothing to say in answer to the major's excited questions.
Occasionally he would rouse himself from this reverie, and he would talk
in a perfunctory sort of fashion about the immediate business of a
moment. He confessed that he had a certain theoretical repugnance to a
_battue_, if it were at all like what people in the newspapers declared
it to be. On the other hand, he could not well understand--judging by
his experiences in the highlands--how the shooting of driven birds could
be so marvellously easy; and he was not quite, sure that the writers he
had referred to had had many opportunities of practising, or even
observing, so very expensive an amusement. Major Stuart, for his part,
freely admitted that he had no scruples whatever. Shooting birds, he
roundly declared, was shooting birds, whether you shot two or two score.
And he demurely hinted that, if he had his choice, he would rather shoot
the two score.

"Mind you, Stuart," Macleod said, "if we are posted anywhere near each
other--mind you shoot at any bird that comes my way. I should like you
to make a big bag that you may talk about in Mull; and I really don't
care about it."

And this was the man whom Miss Carry had described as being nothing but
a slayer of wild animals and a preserver of beasts' skins! Perhaps, in
that imaginary duel between Nature and Art, the enem