" Stonehouse agreed gravely. "I told you so,
but I wouldn't advise anything drastic until you're stronger. We'll
think about it in a month or two. You're better already."

Cosgrave chuckled to himself. In the shadow in which he sat the chuckle
sounded elfish and almost mocking.

"Oh, yes, I'm better!"

Stonehouse took his first holiday for three years, and carried Cosgrave
off with him to a rough shooting-box in the Highlands lent him by a
grateful and sporting patient, and for a week they tramped the moors
together and stalked deer and fished in the salmon river that ran in and
out among the desolate hills. The place was little more than a
shepherd's cottage, growing grey and stubborn as a rock out of the
heather, and beyond that proffered them occasionally by a morose and
distrustful gillie they had no help or other companionship. They won
their food for themselves, cooked it by the smoking fire, and washed
heroically in the icy river water. A sting of winter was already in the
wind and a melancholy and bitter rain swept the hills, giving way at
evening to unearthly sunsets. They saw themselves as pioneers at the
world's end. And Stonehouse, who had calculated its effect on Cosgrave,
was himself caught up in the fierce, rough charm of that daily life. He
who had never played since that circus night played now in passionate
earnest. He proved a good shot, and, for all his inexperience, an
indomitable and clever hunter. His close-confined physical energy could
not shake itself. He liked the long and dogged pursuit, the cruel, often
fruitless struggle up the mountain-sides, the patient waiting, the
triumph of that final shot from a hand unshaken by excitement or fatigue.
A stag showing itself for an instant against the sky-line called up all
the stubborn purpose in him; then he would not turn back until either his
quarry had fallen to him, or night had swallowed them both.

And Cosgrave, half forgotten, tagged docilely at his heels, or lay in the
wet heather on the crest of a hill overlooking the world, and watched and
waited with strange, wide-open eyes. But he never gave the signal. He
shot nothing. His failure seemed to amuse and even please him. A faint,
excited colour came into his cheeks, lashed up by the wind and rain. And
once, a hare running out from under his feet, he gave a wild "halloo!"
like a boy and set off in pursuit, headlong down the stony hillside, his
gun at full cock, threateni