Title:      John Macnab
Author:     John Buchan (1875-1940)
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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      John Macnab
Author:     John Buchan





CHAPTER 1

IN WHICH THREE GENTLEMEN CONFESS THEIR ENNUI


The great doctor stood on the hearth-rug looking down at his friend
who sprawled before him in an easy-chair.  It was a hot day
in early July, and the windows were closed and the blinds half-down
to keep out the glare and the dust.  The standing figure had bent
shoulders, a massive clean-shaven face, and a keen interrogatory air,
and might have passed his sixtieth birthday.  He looked like a
distinguished lawyer, who would soon leave his practice for the Bench.
But it was the man in the chair who was the lawyer, a man who had left
forty behind him, but was still on the pleasant side of fifty.

"I tell you for the tenth time that there's nothing the matter with you."

"And I tell you for the tenth time that I'm miserably ill."

The doctor shrugged his shoulders.  "Then it's a mind diseased,
to which I don't propose to minister.  What do you say is wrong?"

"Simply what my housekeeper calls a 'no-how' feeling."

"It's clearly nothing physical.  Your heart and lungs are sound.
Your digestion's as good as anybody's can be in London in Midsummer.
Your nerves--well, I've tried all the stock tests, and they appear
to be normal."

"Oh, my nerves are all right," said the other wearily.

"Your brain seems good enough, except for this dismal obsession
that you are ill.  I can find no earthly thing wrong, except that
you're stale.  I don't say run-down, for that you're not.
You're stale in mind.  You want a holiday."

"I don't.  I may need one, but I don't want it.  That's precisely
the trouble.  I used to be a glutton for holidays, and spent my leisure
moments during term planning what I was going to do.  Now there seems
to be nothing in the world I want to do--neither work nor play."

"Try fishing.  You used to be keen."

"I've killed all the salmon I mean to kill.  I never want to look
the ugly brutes in the face again."

"Shooting?"

"Too easy and too dull."

"A yacht."

"Stop it, old fellow.  Your catalogue of undesired delights only
makes it worse.  I tell you that there's nothing at this moment
which has the slightest charm for me.  I'm bored with my work,
and I can't think of anything else of any kind for which I would
cross the street.  I don't even want to go into the country and sleep.
It's been coming on for a long time--I did not feel it so badly,
for I was in a service and not my own master.  Now I've nothing to do
except to earn an enormous income, which I haven't any need for.
Work comes rolling in--I've got retainers for nearly every solvent
concern in this land--and all that happens is that I want to strangle
my clerk and a few eminent solicitors.  I don't care a tinker's curse
for success, and what is worse, I'm just as apathetic about the modest
pleasures which used to enliven my life."

"You may be more tired than you think."

"I'm not tired at all."  The speaker rose from his chair yawning,
and walked to the windows to stare into the airless street.
He did not look tired, for his movements were vigorous, and,
though his face had the slight pallor of his profession, his eye
was clear and steady.  He turned round suddenly.

"I tell you what I've got,  It's what the Middle ages suffered
from--I read a book about it the other day--and its called
Taedium Vitae.  It's a special kind of ennui.  I can diagnose
my ailment well enough and Shakespeare has the words for it.
I've come to a pitch where I find 'nothing left remarkable
beneath the visiting moon.'"

Then why do you come to me, if the trouble is not with your body?"

"Because you're you.  I should come to you just the same if you were
a vet., or a bone-setter, or a Christian Scientist.  I want your advice,
not as a fashionable consultant, but as an old friend and a wise man.
It's a state of affairs that can't go on.  What am I to do to get rid
of this infernal disillusionment?  I can't go through the rest of
my life dragging my wing."

The doctor was smiling.

"If you ask my professional advice," he said, "I am bound to tell you
that medical science has no suggestion to offer.  If you consult me as
a friend, I advise you to steal a horse in some part of the world where
a horse-thief is usually hanged."

The other considered.  "Pretty drastic prescription for a man who
has been a Law Officer of the Crown."

"I speak figuratively.  You've got to rediscover the comforts of your
life by losing them for a little.  You have good food and all the rest
of it at your command--well, you've got to be in want for a bit to
appreciate them.  You're secure and respected and rather eminent--well,
somehow or other get under the weather.  If you could induce the
newspapers to accuse you of something shady and have the devil of a job
to clear yourself it might do the trick.  The fact is, you've grown
too competent.  You need to be made to struggle for your life again--your
life or your reputation.  You have to find out the tonic of difficulty,
and you can't find it in your profession.  Therefore I say
'Steal a horse.'"

A faint interest appeared in the other's eyes.

"That sounds to me good sense.  But, hang it all, it's
utterly unpractical.  I can't go looking for scrapes.
I should feel like play-acting if in cold blood I got myself
into difficulties, and I take it that the essence of your
prescription is that I must feel desperately in earnest."

"I'm not prescribing.  Heaven forbid that I should advise a friend
to look for trouble.  I'm merely stating how in the abstract I
regard your case."

The patient rose to go.  "Miserable comforters are ye all," he groaned.
"Well, it appears you can do nothing for me except to suggest the
advisability of crime.  I suppose it's no good trying to make you
take a fee?"

The doctor shook his head.  "I wasn't altogether chaffing.
Honestly, you would be the better of dropping for a month or two
into another world--a harder one.  A hand on a cattle-boat,
for instance."

Sir Edward Leithen sighed deeply as he turned from the doorstep
down the long hot street.  He did not look behind him, or he would have
seen another gentleman approach cautiously round the corner of a
side-street, and, when the coast was clear, ring the doctor's bell.
He was so completely fatigued with life that he neglected to be cautious
at crossings, as was his habit, and was all but slain by a motor-omnibus.
Everything seemed weary and over-familiar--the summer smell of town,
the din of traffic, the panorama of faces, pretty women shopping,
the occasional sight of a friend.  Long ago, he reflected with disgust,
there had been a time when he had enjoyed it all.

He found sanctuary at last in the shade and coolness of his club.
He remembered that he was dining out, and bade the porter telephone
that he could not come, giving no reason.  He remembered, too,
that there was a division in the House that night, an important division
advertised by a three-line whip.  He declined to go near the place.
At any rate, he would have the dim consolation of behaving badly.
His clerk was probably at the moment hunting feverishly for him,
for he had missed a consultation in the great Argentine bank case
which was in the paper next morning.  That could also slide.
He wanted, nay, he was determined, to make a mess of it.

Then he discovered that he was hungry, and that it was nearly the hour
when a man may dine. "I've only one positive feeling left," he told
himself, "the satisfaction of my brute needs.  Nice position for a
gentleman and a Christian!"

There was one other man in the dining-room, sitting at the little table
in the window.  At first sight he had the look of an undergraduate,
a Rugby Blue, perhaps, who had just come down from the University,
for he had the broad, slightly stooped shoulders of the football-player.
He had a ruddy face, untidy sandy hair, and large reflective grey eyes.
It was those eyes which declared his age, for round them were the many
fine wrinkles which come only from the passage of time.

"Hullo, John," said Leithen.  "May I sit at your table?"

The other, whose name was Palliser-Yeates, nodded.

"You may certainly eat in my company, but I've got nothing to say
to you, Ned.  I'm feeling as dried-up as a dead starfish."

They ate their meal in silence, and so preoccupied was Sir Edward Leithen
with his own affairs that it did not seem to him strange that
Mr Palliser-Yeates, who was commonly a person of robust spirits
and plentiful conversation, should have the air of a deaf-mute.
When they had reached the fish, two other diners took their seats
and waved them a greeting.  One of them was a youth with lean,
high-coloured cheeks, who limped slightly; the other a tallish older
man with a long dark face, a small dark moustache, and a neat
pointed chin which gave him something of the air of a hidalgo.
He looked weary and glum, but his companion seemed to be in the best of
tempers, for his laugh rang out in that empty place with a startling
boyishness.  Mr Palliser-Yeates looked up angrily, with a shiver.

"Noisy brute, Archie Roylance!" he observed.  "I suppose he's above
himself since Ascot.  His horse won some beastly race, didn't it?
It's a good thing to be young and an ass."

There was that in his tone which roused Leithen from his apathy.
He cast a sharp glance at the other's face.

"You're off-colour."

"No," said the other brusquely.  "I'm perfectly fit.  Only I'm
getting old."

This was food for wonder, inasmuch as Mr Palliser-Yeates had a
reputation for a more than youthful energy and, although forty-five
years of age, was still accustomed to do startling things on the
Chamonix Aiguilles.  He was head of an eminent banking firm and
something of an authority on the aberrations of post-war finance.

A gleam of sympathy came into Leithen's eyes.

"How does it take you?" he asked.

"I've lost zest.  Everything seems more or less dust and ashes.
When you suddenly wake up and find that you've come to regard your
respectable colleagues as so many fidgety old women and the job
you've given your life to as an infernal squabble about trifles--why,
you begin to wonder what's going to happen."

"I suppose a holiday ought to happen."

"The last thing I want.  That's my complaint.  I have no desire
to do anything, work or play, and yet I'm not tired--only bored."

Leithen's sympathy had become interest.

"Have you seen a doctor?"

The other hesitated.  "Yes," he said at length.  "I saw old Acton Croke
this afternoon.  He was no earthly use.  He advised me to go to Moscow
and fix up a trade agreement.  He thought that might make me content
with my present lot."

"He told me to steal a horse."

Mr Palliser-Yeates stared in extreme surprise. "You! Do you feel
the same way?  Have you been to Croke?"

"Three hours ago.  I thought he talked good sense.  He said I must get
into a rougher life so as to appreciate the blessings of the life
that I'm fed up with.  Probably he is right, but you can't take
that sort of step in cold blood."

Mr. Palliser-Yeates assented.  The fact of having found an associate
in misfortune seemed to enliven slightly, very slightly, the spirits
of both.  From the adjoining table came, like an echo from a happier
world, the ringing voice and hearty laughter of youth.  Leithen jerked
his head towards them.

"I would give a good deal for Archie's gusto," he said.  "My sound right
leg, for example.  Or, if I couldn't I'd like Charles Lamancha's
insatiable ambition.  If you want as much as he wants, you don't
suffer from tedium."

Palliser-Yeates looked at the gentleman in question, the tall dark one
of the two diners.  "I'm not so sure.  Perhaps he had got too much
too easily.  He has come on uncommon quick, you know, and, if you
do that, there's apt to arrive a moment when you flag."

Lord Lamancha--the title had no connection with Don Quixote and Spain,
but was the name of a shieling in a Border glen which had been the home
six centuries ago of the ancient house of Merkland--was an object of
interest to many of his countrymen.  The Marquis of Liddesdale,
his father, was a hale old man who might reasonably be expected to live
for another ten years and so prevent his son's career being compromised
by a premature removal to the House of Lords.  He had a safe seat for
a London division, was a member of the Cabinet, and had a high
reputation for the matter-of-fact oratory which has replaced the
pre-war grandiloquence.  People trusted him, because, in spite of his
hidalgo-ish appearance, he was believed to have that combination
of candour and intelligence which England desires in her public men.
Also he was popular, for his record in the war and the rumour of a
youth spent in adventurous travel touched the imagination of the
ordinary citizen.  At the moment he was being talked of for a great
Imperial post which was soon to become vacant, and there was gossip,
in the alternative, of a Ministerial readjustment which would make him
the pivot of a controversial Government.  It was a remarkable position
for a man to have won in his early forties, who had entered public life
with every disadvantage of birth.

"I suppose he's happy," said Leithen.  "But I've always held that there
was a chance of Charles kicking over the traces.  I doubt if his
ambition is an organic part of him and not stuck on with pins.
There's a fundamental daftness in all Merklands.  I remember him
at school."

The two men finished their meal and retired to the smoking-room,
where they drank their coffee abstractedly.  Each was thinking
about the other, and wondering what light the other's case could
shed on his own.  The speculation gave each a faint glimmer of comfort.

Presently the voice of Sir Archibald Roylance was heard, and that
ebullient young man flung himself down on a sofa beside Leithen,
while Lord Lamancha selected a cigar.  Sir Archie settled his game leg
to his satisfaction, and filled an ancient pipe.

"Heavy weather," he announced.  "I've been tryin' to cheer up old
Charles and it's been like castin' a fly against a thirty-mile gale.
I can't make out what's come over him.  Here's a deservin' lad like me
struggling at the foot of the ladder and not cast down, and there's
Charles high up on the top rungs as glum as an owl and declarin' that
the whole thing's foolishness.  Shockin' spectacle for youth."

Lamancha, who had found an arm-chair beside Palliser-Yeates, looked at
the others and smiled wryly.

"Is that true, Charles?" Leithen asked.  "Are you also feeling hipped?
Because John and I have just been confessing to each other that we're
more fed up with everything in this gay world than we've ever been
before in our useful lives."

Lamancha nodded.  "I don't know what has come over me.  I couldn't face
the House to-night, so I telephoned to Archie to come and cheer me.
I suppose I'm stale, but it's a new kind of staleness, for I'm perfectly
fit in body, and I can't honestly say I feel weary in mind.
It's simply that the light has gone out of the landscape.  Nothing has
any savour."

The three men had been a school together, they had been contemporaries
at the University, and close friends ever since.  They had no secrets
from each other.  Leithen, into whose face and voice had come a remote
hint of interest, gave a sketch of his own mood, and the diagnosis
of the eminent consultant.  Archie Roylance stared blankly from one
to the other, as if some new thing had broken in upon his simple
philosophy of life.

"You fellows beat me," he cried.  "Here you are, every one of you
a swell of sorts, with every thing to make you cheerful, and you're
grousin' like a labour battalion!  You should be jolly well ashamed
of yourselves.  It's fairly temptin' Providence.  What you want is
some hard exercise.  Go and sweat ten hours a day on a steep hill,
and you'll get rid of these notions."

"My dear Archie," said Leithen. "your prescription is too crude.
I used to be fond enough of sport, but I wouldn't stir a foot to catch
a sixty-pound salmon or kill a fourteen pointer.  I don't want to.
I see no fun in it.  I'm Blase.  It's too easy."

"Well, I'm dashed!  You're the worst spoiled chap I ever heard of,
and a nice example to democracy."  Archie spoke as if his gods
had been blasphemed.

"Democracy, anyhow, is a good example to us.  I know now why workmen
strike sometimes and can't give any reason.  We're on strike--against
our privileges."

Archie was not listening. "Too easy, you say?" he repeated.  "I call that
pretty fair conceit.  I've seen you miss birds often enough, old fellow."

"Nevertheless, it seems to me too easy.  Everything has become too easy,
both work and play."

"You can screw up the difficulty, you know.  Try shootin' with a twenty
bore, or fishin' for salmon with a nine-foot rod and a dry-fly cast."

"I don't want to kill anything," said Palliser-Yeates.  "I don't see
the fun of it."

Archie was truly shocked.  Then a light of reminiscence came into his eye.
"You remind me of poor old Jim Tarras," he said thoughtfully.

There were no inquiries about Jim Tarras, so Archie volunteered
further news.

"You remember Jim? He had a little place somewhere in Moray, and spent
most of his time shootin' in East Africa.  Poor chap, he went back there
with Smuts in the war and perished of blackwater.  Well, when his father
died and he came home to settle down, he found it an uncommon dull job.
So, to enliven it, he invented a new kind of sport.  He knew all there
was to be known about Shikar, and from trampin' about the Highlands
he had a pretty accurate knowledge of the country-side.  So he used to
write to the owner of a deer forest and present his compliments, and beg
to inform him that between certain dates he proposed to kill one of
his stags.  When he had killed it he undertook to deliver it to the owner,
for he wasn't a thief."

"I call that poaching on the grand scale," observed Palliser-Yeates.

"Wasn't it? Most of the fellows he wrote to accepted his challenge and
told him to come and do his damnedest.  Little Avington, I remember,
turned on every man and boy about the place for three nights to watch
the forest.  Jim usually worked at night, you see.  One or two
curmudgeons talked of the police and prosecutin' him, but public
opinion was against them--too dashed unsportin'."

"Did he always get his stag?" Leithen asked.

"In-var-iably, and got it off the ground and delivered it to the owner,
for that was the rule of the game.  Sometimes he had a precious near
squeak, and Avington, who was going off his head at the time, tried
to pot him--shot a gillie in the leg too.  But Jim always won out.
I should think he was the best Shikari God ever made."

"Is that true, Archie?" Lamancha's voice had a magisterial tone.

"True--as--true.  I know all about it, far Wattie Lithgow, who was Jim's
man, is with me now.  He and his wife keep house for me at Crask.
Jim never took but the one man with him, and that was Wattie, and he
made him just about as cunning an old dodger as himself."

Leithen yawned.  "What sort of a place is Crask?" he inquired.

"Tiny little place.  No fishin' except some hill lochs and only
rough shootin'.  I take it for the birds.  Most marvellous nestin'
ground in Britain barrin' some of the Outer Islands.  I don't know why
it should be, but it is.  Something to do with the Gulf Stream, maybe.
Anyhow, I've got the greenshank breedin' regularly and the red-throated
diver, and half a dozen rare duck.  It's a marvellous stoppin' place in
spring too, for birds goin' north."

"Are you much there?"

"Generally in April, and always from the middle of August till the
middle of October.  You see, it's about the only place I know where
you can do exactly as you like.  The house is stuck away up on a long
slope of moor, and you see the road for a mile from the windows,
so you've plenty of time to take to the hills if anybody comes
to worry you.  I roost there with old Sime, my butler, and the two
Lithgows, and put up a pal now and then who likes the life.
It's the jolliest bit of the year for me."

"Have you any neighbours?"

"Heaps, but they don't trouble me much.  Crask's the earthenware pot
among the brazen vessels--mighty hard to get to and nothing to see
when you get there.  So the brazen vessels keep to themselves."

Lamancha went to a shelf of books above a writing-table and returned
with an atlas.  "Who are your brazen vessels?" he asked.

"Well, my brassiest is old Claybody at Haripol--that's four miles off
across the hill."

"Bit of a swine, isn't he?" said Leithen.

"Oh, no.  He's rather a good old bird himself.  Don't care so much for
his family.  Then there's Glenraden t'other side of the Larrig"--he
indicated a point on the map which Lamancha was studying--"with a real
old Highland grandee living in it--Alastair Raden--commanded the
Scots Guards, I believe, in the year One.  Family as old as the Flood
and very poor, but just manage to hang on.  He's the last Raden that
will live there, but that doesn't matter so much as he has no son--only
a brace of daughters.  Then, of course, there's the show place,
Strathlarrig--horrible great house as large as a factory, but wonderful
fine salmon-fishin'.  Some Americans have got it this year--Boston or
Philadelphia, I don't remember which--very rich and said to be rather
high-brow.  There's a son, I believe."

Lamancha closed the atlas.

"Do you know any of these people, Archie?" he asked.

"Only the Claybody's--very slightly.  I stayed with them in Suffolk
for a covert shoot two years ago.  The Radens have been to call on me,
but I was out.  The Bandicotts--that's the Americans--are new this year.

"Is the sport good?"

"The very best.  Haripol is about the steepest and most sportin' forest
in the Highlands, and Glenraden is nearly as good.  There's no forest
at Strathlarrig, but, as I've told you, amazin' good salmon fishin'.
For a west coast river, I should put the Larrig only second to
the Laxford."

Lamancha consulted the atlas again and appeared to ponder.  Then he
lifted his head, and his long face, which had a certain heaviness
and sullenness in repose, was now lit by a smile which made it
handsomer and younger.

"Could you have me at Crask this autumn?" he asked.  "My wife has to go
to Aix for a cure and I have no plans after the House rises."

"I should jolly well think so," cried Archie.  "There's heaps of room
in the old house, and I promise you I'll make you comfortable.  Look here,
you fellows!  Why shouldn't all three of you come?  I can get in a couple
of extra maids from Inverlarrig."

"Excellent idea," said Lamancha.  "But you mustn't bother about the maids.
I'll bring my own man, and we'll have a male establishment, except for
Mrs. Lithgow....By the way, I suppose you can count on Mrs. Lithgow?"

"How do you mean, 'count'?" asked Archie, rather puzzled.  Then a
difficulty struck him.  "But wouldn't you be bored?  I can't show you
much in the way of sport, and you're not naturalists like me.
It's a quiet life, you know."

"I shouldn't be bored," said Lamancha, "I should take steps
to prevent it."

Leithen and Palliser-Yeates seemed to divine his intention,
for they simultaneously exclaimed.--"It isn't fair to excite Archie,
Charles," the latter said.  "You know that you'll never do it."

"I intend to have a try.  Hang it, John, it's the specific we were
talking about--devilish difficult, devilish unpleasant, and calculated
to make a man long for a dull life.  Of course you two fellows will
join me."

"What on earth are you talkin' about?" said the mystified Archie.
"Join what?"

"We're proposing to quarter ourselves on you, my lad, and take a leaf
out of Jim Tarras's book."

Sir Archie first stared, then he laughed nervously, then he called upon
his gods, then he laughed freely and long.  "Do you really mean it?
What an almighty rag!...But hold on a moment.  It will be rather awkward
for me to take a hand.  You see I've just been adopted as prospective
candidate for that part of the country."

"So much the better.  If you're found out--which you won't be--you'll
get the poaching vote solid, and a good deal more.  Most men at heart
are poachers."

Archie shook a doubting head.  "I don't know about that.  They're an
awfully respectable lot up there, and all those dashed stalkers and
keepers and gillies are a sort of trade-union.  The scallywags are a
hopeless minority.  If I get sent to quod--"

"You won't get sent to quod.  At the worst it will be a fine, and you
can pay that.  What's the extreme penalty for this kind of offence, Ned?"

"I don't know," Leithen answered.  "I'm not an authority on Scots law.
But Archie's perfectly right.  We can't go making a public exhibition
of ourselves like this.  We're too old to be listening to the chimes
at midnight."

"Now, look here."  Lamancha had shaken off his glumness and was as tense
and eager as a schoolboy.  "Didn't your doctor advise you to
steal a horse?  Well, this is a long sight easier than horse-stealing.
It's admitted that we three want a tonic.  On second thoughts Archie
had better stand out--he hasn't our ailment, and a healthy man doesn't
need medicine.  But we three need it, and this idea is an inspiration.
Of course we take risks, but they're sound sporting risks.  After all,
I've a reputation of a kind, and I put as much into the pool as anyone."

His hearers regarded him with stony faces, but this in no way checked
his ardour.

"It's a perfectly first-class chance.  A lonely house where you can see
visitors a mile off, and an unsociable dog like Archie for a host.
We write the letters and receive the answers at a London address.
We arrive at Crask by stealth, and stay there unbeknown to the country-
side, for Archie can count on his people and my man in a sepulchre.  Also
we've got Lithgow, who played the same game with Jim Tarras.  We have a job
which will want every bit of our nerve and ingenuity with a reasonable
spice of danger--for, of course, if we fail we should cut queer figures.
The thing is simply ordained by Heaven for our benefit.  Of course you'll
come."

"I'll do nothing of the kind," said Leithen.

"No more will I," said Palliser-Yeates.

"Then I'll go alone," said Lamancha cheerfully.  "I'm out for a cure, if
you're not.  You've a month to make up your mind, and meanwhile a share in
the syndicate remains open to you."

Sir Archie looked as if he wished he had never mentioned the fatal name of
Jim Tarras, "I say, you know, Charles," he began hesitatingly, but was cut
short.

"Are you going back on your invitation?" asked Lamancha sternly.  "Very
well, then, I've accepted it, and what's more I'm going to draft a specimen
letter that will go to your Highland grandee, and Claybody and the
American."

He rose with a bound and fetched a pencil and a sheet of notepaper from the
nearest writing-table.  "Here goes--Sir, I have the honour to inform you
that I propose to kill a stag--or a salmon as the case may be--on your
ground between midnight on---and midnight---.  We can leave the dates open
for the present.  The animal, of course, remains your property and will be
duly delivered to you.  It is a condition that it must be removed wholly
outside your bounds.  In he event of the undersigned failing to achieve his
purpose he will pay as forfeit one hundred pounds, and if successful fifty
pounds to any charity you may appoint.  I have the honour to be, your
obedient humble servant."

"What do you say to that?" he asked.  "Formal, a little official, but
perfectly civil, and the writer proposes to pay his way like a gentleman.
Bound to make a good impression."

"You've forgotten the signature," Leithen observed dryly.

"It must be signed with a nom de guerre."  He thought for a moment.  "I've
got it.  At once business-like and mysterious."

At the bottom of the draft he scrawled the name "John Macnab."



CHAPTER 2


DESPERATE CHARACTERS IN COUNCIL


Crask--which is properly Craoisg and is so spelled by the Ordnance
Survey--when the traveller approaches it from the Larrig Bridge
has the air of a West Highland terrier, couchant and regardant.
You are to picture a long tilt of moorland running east and west,
not a smooth lawn of heather, but seamed with gullies and patched
with bogs and thickets and crowned at the summit with a low line
of rocks above which may be seen peeping the spikes of the distant
Haripol hills.  About three-quarters of the way up the slope stands
the little house, whitewashed, slated, grey stone framing the narrow
windows, with that attractive jumble of masonry which belongs to an
adapted farm.  It is approached by a road which scorns detours and runs
straight from the glen highway, and it looks south over broken moorland
to the shining links of the Larrig, and beyond them to the tributary vale
of the Raden and the dark mountains of its source.  Such is the view
from the house itself, but from the garden behind there is an ampler
vista, since to the left a glimpse may be had of the policies of
Strathlarrig and even of a corner of that monstrous mansion, and to
the right of the tidal waters of the river and the yellow sands on which
in the stillest weather the Atlantic frets.  Crask is at once a sanctuary
and a watchtower; it commands a wide countryside and yet preserves its
secrecy, for, though officially approached by a road like a ruler,
there are a dozen sheltered ways of reaching it by the dips and crannies
of the hill-side.

So thought a man who about five o'clock on the afternoon of the 24th
of August was inconspicuously drawing towards it by way of a peat road
which ran from the east through a wood of birches.  Sir Edward Leithen's
air was not more cheerful than when we met him a month ago, except that
there was now a certain vigour in it which came from ill-temper.  He had
been for a long walk in the rain, and the scent of wet bracken and
birches and bog myrtle, the peaty fragrance of the hills salted with
the tang of the sea, had failed to comfort, though, not so long ago,
it had had the power to intoxicate.  Scrambling in the dell of a burn,
he had observed both varieties of the filmy fern and what he knew to be
a very rare cerast, and, though an ardent botanist, he had observed
them unmoved.  Soon the rain had passed, the west wind blew aside
the cloud-wrack, and the Haripol tops had come out black against a
turquoise sky, with Sgurr Dearg, awful and remote, towering above all.
Though a keen mountaineer, the spectacle had neither exhilarated nor
tantalised him.  He was in a bad temper, and he knew that at Crask he
should find three other men in the same case, for even the debonair
Sir Archie was in the dumps with a toothache.

He told himself that he had come on a fool's errand, and the extra
absurdity was that he could not quite see how he had been induced
to come.  He had consistently refused: so had Palliser-Yeates;
Archie as a prospective host had been halting and nervous; there was
even a time when Lamancha, the source of all the mischief, had seemed
to waver.  Nevertheless, some occult force--false shame probably--had
shepherded them all here, unwilling, unconvinced, cold-footed, destined
to a preposterous adventure for which not one of them had the slightest
zest....Yet they had taken immense pains to arrange the thing, just as if
they were all exulting in the prospect.  His own clerk was to attend
to the forwarding of their letters including any which might be
addressed to "John Macnab."

The newspapers had contained paragraphs announcing that the Countess
of Lamancha had gone to Aix for a month, where she would presently be
joined by her husband, who intended to spend a week drinking the waters
before proceeding to his grouse-moor of Leriot on the Borders.
The Times, three days ago, had recorded Sir Edward Leithen and Mr John
Palliser-Yeates as among those who had left Euston for Edinburgh,
and more than one social paragrapher had mentioned that the
ex-Attorney-General would be spending his holiday fishing on the Tay,
while the eminent banker was to the be the guest of the Chancellor of
the Exchequer at an informal vacation conference on the nation's
precarious finances.  Lamancha had been fetched under cover of night by
Archie from a station so remote that no one but a lunatic would think
of using it.  Palliser-Yeates had tramped for two days across the hills
from the south, and Leithen himself, having been instructed to bring
a Ford car, had had a miserable drive of a hundred and fifty miles in
the rain, during which he had repeatedly lost his way.  He had carried out
his injunctions as to secrecy by arriving at two in the morning by means
of this very peat road.  The troops had achieved their silent
concentration, and the silly business must now begin.  Leithen groaned,
and anathematised the memory of Jim Tarras.

As he approached the house he saw, to his amazement, a large closed car
making its way down the slope.  Putting his glass on it, he watched it
reach the glen road and then turn east, passing the gates of Strathlarrig,
till he lost it behind a shoulder of hill.  Hurrying across the
stable-yard, he entered the house by the back-door, disturbing Lithgow
the Keeper in the midst of a whispered confabulation with Lamancha's man,
whose name was Shapp.  Passing through the gun-room he found, in the big
smoking-room which looked over the valley, Lamancha and Palliser-Yeates
with the crouch of conspirators flattening their noses on the windowpane.

The sight of him diverted the attention of the two from the landscape.

"This is an infernal plant," Palliser-Yeates exclaimed.  "Archie swore
to us that no one ever came here, and the second day a confounded great
car arrives.  Charles and I had just time to nip in here and lock
the door, while Archie parleyed with them.  He's been uncommon quick
about it.  The brutes didn't stay for more than five minutes."

"Who were they?" Leithen asked.

"Only got a side glance at them.  They seemed to be a stout woman and a
girl--oh, and a yelping little dog.  I expect Archie kicked him, for he
was giving tongue from the drawing-room."

The door opened to admit their host, who bore in one hand a large
whisky-and-soda.  He dropped wearily into a chair, where he sipped
the beverage.  An observer might have noted that what could be seen
of his wholesome face was much inflamed, and that a bandage round chin
and cheeks which ended in a top-knot above his scalp gave him the
appearance of Ricquet with the Tuft in the Fairytale.

"That's all right," he said, in the tone of a man who has done a good
piece of work.  "I've choked off visitors at Crask for a bit, for the
old lady will put it all round the country-side."

"Put what?" said Leithen, and "Who is the old lady?" asked Lamancha,
and "Did you kick the dog?" demanded Palliser-Yeates.

Archie looked drearily at his friends.  "It was Lady Claybody and a
daughter--I think the second one--and their horrid little dog.
They won't come back in a hurry--nobody will come back--I'm marked down
as a pariah.  Hang it, I may as well chuck my candidature.
I've scuppered my prospects for the sake of you three asses."

"What has the blessed martyr been and done?" asked Palliser-Yeates.

"I've put a barrage round this place, that's all.  I was very civil to
the Claybodys, though I felt a pretty fair guy with my head in a sling.
I bustled about, talking nonsense and offerin' tea, and then, as luck
would have it, I trod on the hound.  That's the worst of my game leg.
The brute nearly had me over, and it started howlin'--you must have
heard it.  That dog's a bit weak in the head, for it can't help barkin'
just out of pure cussedness--Lady Claybody says it's high-strung because
of its fine breedin'.  It got something to bark for this time, and
the old woman had it in her arms fondlin' it and lookin' very
old-fashioned at me.  It seems the beast's name is Roguie and she
called it her darlin' Wee Roguie, for she's pickin' up a bit of Scots
since she came to live in these parts....Lucky Mackenzie wasn't at home.
He'd have eaten it....Well, after that things settled down, and I was
just goin' to order tea, when it occurred to the daughter to ask
what was wrong with my face.  Then I had an inspiration."

Archie paused and smiled sourly.

"I said I didn't know, but I feared I might be sickenin' for small-pox.
I hinted that my face was a horrid sight under the bandage."

"Good for you, Archie," said Lamancha.  "What happened then?"

"They bolted--fairly ran for it.  They did record time into their car-
scarcely stopped to say goodbye.  I suppose you realise what I've done,
you fellows.  The natives here are scared to death of infectious
diseases, and if we hadn't our own people we wouldn't have a servant
left in the house.  The story will be all over the country-side in
two days, and my only fear is that it may bring some medical officer
of health nosin' round....Anyhow, it will choke off visitors."

"Archie, you're a brick," was Lamancha's tribute.

"I'm very much afraid I'm a fool, but thank Heaven I'm not the only one.
Sime," he shouted in a voice of thunder, "what's happened to tea?"

The shout brought the one-armed butler and Shapp with the apparatus of
the meal, and an immense heap of letters all addressed to
Sir Archibald Roylance.

"Hullo! the mail has arrived," cried the master of the house.
"Now let's see what's the news of John Macnab?"

He hunted furiously among the correspondence, tearing open envelopes and
distributing letters to the others with the rapidity of a conjurer.
One little sealed packet he reserved to the last, and drew from it
three missives bearing the same superscription.

These he opened, glanced at, and handed to Lamancha.

"Read 'em out, Charles," he said.  "It's the answers at last."

Lamancha read slowly the first document, of which this is the text:

                                         GLENRADEN CASTLE,
                                             STRATHLARRIG,
                                               AUG.--19--,
SIR,
  I have received your insolent letter.  I do not know what kind of
  rascal you may be, except that you have the morals of a bandit
  and the assurance of a halfpenny journalist.  But since you seem
  in your perverted way to be a sportsman, I am not the man to refuse
  your challenge.  My reply is, sir, damn your eyes and have a try.
  I defy you to kill a stag in my forest between midnight on the 28th
  of August and midnight of the 30th.  I will give instructions to
  my men to guard my marches, and if you should be roughly handled
  by them you have only to blame yourself.

                                         Yours faithfully,
                                               Alastair Raden.
  John Macnab, Esq.

"That's a good fellow," said Archie with conviction.  "Just the sort
of letter I'd write myself.  He takes things in the proper spirit.
But it's a blue look-out for your chances, my lads.  What old Raden
doesn't' know about deer isn't knowledge."

Lamancha read the second reply:

                                          STRATHLARRIG HOUSE,
                                                STRATHLARRIG,
                                                  Aug.--, 19--.
  MY DEAR SIR,
  Your letter was somewhat of a surprise, but as I am not yet familiar
  with the customs of this country, I forbear to enlarge on this point,
  and since you have marked it 'Confidential' I am unable to take advice.
  You state that you intend to kill a salmon in the Strathlarrig water
  between midnight on September 1 and midnight on September 3,
  this salmon, if killed, to remain my property.  I have consulted
  such books as might give me guidance, and I am bound to state that in
  my view the laws of Scotland are hostile to your suggested enterprise.
  Nevertheless, I do not take my stand on the law, for I presume that
  your proposition is conceived in a sporting spirit, and that you
  dare me to stop you.  Well sir, I will see you on that hand.
  The fishing is not that good at present that I am inclined to quarrel
  about one salmon.  I give you leave to use every method that may occur
  to you to capture that fish, and I promise to use every method that may
  occur to me to prevent you,  In your letter you undertake to use only
  'legitimate means.'  I would have pleasure in meeting you in the same
  spirit, but I reckon that all means are counted legitimate in the
  capture of poachers.
                                       Cordially,
                                       JUNIUS THEODORE BANDICOTT.
  Mr. J Macnab.

"That's the young'un," Archie observed.  "The old man was christened
'Acheson,' and don't take any interest in fishin'.  He spends his time
in lookin' for Norse remains."

"He seems a decent sort of fellow," said Palliser-Yeates, "but I don't
quite like the last sentence.  He'll probably try shooting, same as his
countrymen once did on the Beauly.  Whoever gets this job will have some
excitement for his money."

Lamancha read out the last letter:

                                       227 NORTH MELVILLE STREET,
                                                EDINBURGH,
                                                Aug.--, 19--
  SIR,
                   Re Haripol Forest
  Our client, the Right Honourable Lord Claybody, has read to us on the
  telephone your letter of Aug.-- and has desired us to reply to it.
  We are instructed to say that our client is at a loss to understand
  how to take your communication, whether as a piece of impertinence
  or as a serious threat.  If it is the latter, and you persist in your
  intention, we are instructed to apply to the Court for a summary
  interdict to prevent your entering upon his lands.  We would also
  point out that under the Criminal Law of Scotland, any person
  whatsoever who commits a trespass in the daytime by entering upon
  any land without leave of the proprietor, in pursuit of, inter alia,
  deer, is liable to a fine of two pounds, while, if such person have
  his face blackened, or if five or more persons acting in concert commit
  the trespass, the penalty is five pounds (2 & 3 William IV, C. 68).
                       We are, sir,
                         Your obedient servants,
                         PROSSER, McKELPIE, AND MACLYMONT.

  John Macnab, Esq.

Lamancha laughed.  "Is that good law, Ned?"

Leithen read the letter again.  "I suppose so.  Deer being Ferae Naturae,
there is no private property in them or common law crime in killing them,
and the only remedy is to prevent trespass in pursuit of them or to punish
the trespasser."

"It seems to me that you get off pretty lightly," said Archie.  "Two quid
is not much in the way of a fine, for I don't suppose you want to black
your faces or march five deep into Haripol....But what a rotten sportsman
old Claybody is!"

Palliser-Yeates heaved a sigh of apparent relief.  "I am bound to say
the replies are better than I expected.  It will be a devil of a business,
though, to circumvent that old Highland chief, and that young American
sounds formidable.  Only, if we're caught out there, we're dealing with
sportsmen and can appeal to their higher nature, you know.  Claybody is
probably the easiest proposition so far as getting a stag is concerned,
but if we're nobbled by him we needn't look for mercy.  Still, it's only
a couple of pounds."

"You're an ass, John," said Leithen.  "It's only a couple of pounds for
John Macnab.  But if these infernal Edinburgh lawyers get on the job,
it will be a case of producing the person of John Macnab, and then we're
all in the cart.  Don't you realise that in this fool's game we simply
cannot afford to lose--none of us?"

"That," said Lamancha, "is beyond doubt the truth, and it's just there
that the fun comes in."

The reception of the three letters had brightened the atmosphere.
Each man had now something to think about, and, till it was time
to dress for dinner, each was busy with sheets of the Ordnance maps.
The rain had begun again, the curtains were drawn, and round a good fire
of peats they read and smoked and dozed.  Then they had hot baths,
and it was a comparatively cheerful and very hungry party that assembled
in the dining-room.  Archie proposed champagne, but the offer was
unanimously declined.  "We ought to be in training," Lamancha warned him.
"Keep the Widow for the occasions when we need comforting.
They'll come all right."

Palliser-Yeates was enthusiastic about the food.  "I must say, you do us
very well," he told his host.  "These haddocks are the best things I've
ever eaten.  How do you manage to get fresh sea-fish here?"

Archie appealed to Sime.  "They come from Inverlarrig, Sir Erchibald,"
said the butler.  "There's a wee laddie comes up here selling haddies
verra near every day."

"Bless my soul, Sime.  I thought no one came up here.  You know
my orders."

"This is just a tinker laddie, Sir Erchibald.  He sleeps in a cairt
down about Larrigmore.  He just comes wi' his powny and awa' back,
and doesna' bide twae minutes.  Mistress Lithgow was anxious for haddies,
for she said gentlemen got awfu' tired of saumon and trout.'

"All right, Sime.  I'll speak to Mrs. Lithgow.  She'd better tell him
we don't want any more.  By the way, we ought to see Lithgow after dinner.
Tell him to come to the smoking-room."

When Sime had put the port on the table and withdrawn, Leithen lifted
up his voice.

"Look here, before we get too deep into this thing, let's make sure that
we know where we are.  We're all three turned up here--why, I don't know.
But there's still time to go back.  We realise now what we're in for.
Are you clear in your minds that you want to go on?"

"I am," said Lamancha doggedly.  "I'm out for a cure.  Hang it, I feel
a better man already."

"I suppose your profession makes you take risks," said Leithen dryly,
"Mine doesn't.  What about you, John?"

Palliser-Yeates shifted uneasily in his chair.  "I don't want to go on.
I feel no kind of keenness, and my feet are rather cold.
And yet--you know--I should feel rather ashamed to turn back."

Archie uplifted his turbaned head.  "That's how I feel, though I'm not
on myself in this piece.  We've given hostages, and the credit of John
Macnab is at stake.  We've dared old Raden and young Bandicott,
and we can't decently cry off.  Besides, I'm advertised as a smallpox
patient, and it would be a pity to make a goat of myself for nothing.
Mind you, I stand to lose as much as anybody, if we bungle things."

Leithen had the air of bowing to the inevitable.  "Very well,
that's settled.  But I wish to Heaven I saw myself safely out of it.
My only inducement to go on is to score off that bounder Claybody.
He and his attorney's letter put my hackles up."

In the smoking-room Lamancha busied himself with preparing three slips
of paper and writing on them three names.

"We must hold a council of war," he said.  "First of all, we have taken
measures to keep our presence here secret.  My man Shapp is all right.
What about your people, Archie?"

"Sime and Carfrae have been warned, and you may count on them.
They're the class of lads that ask no questions.  So are the Lithgows.
We've no neighbours, and they're anyway not the gossiping kind,
and I've put them on their Bible oath.  I fancy they think the reason
is politics.  They're a trifle scared of you, Charles, and your
reputation, for they're not accustomed to hidin' Cabinet Ministers
in the scullery.  Lithgow's a fine crusted old Tory."

"Good.  Well, we'd better draw for beats, and get Lithgow in."

The figure that presently appeared before them was a small man, about fifty
years of age, with a great breadth of shoulder and a massive face decorated
with a wispish tawny beard.  His mouth had the gravity and primness of an
elder of the Kirk, but his shrewd blue eyes were not grave.  The son of a
Tweeddale shepherd who had emigrated years before to a cheviot farm in
Sutherland, he was in every line and feature the Lowlander, and his
speech had still the broad intonation of the Borders.  But all his life
had been spent in the Highlands on this and that deer forest, and as a
young stalker he had been picked out by Jim Tarras for his superior
hill craft.  To Archie his chief recommendation was that he was a
passionate naturalist, who was as eager to stalk a rare bird with
a field-glass as to lead a rifle up to deer.  Other traits will appear
in the course of this narrative; but it may be noted here that he was
a voracious reader and in the long winter nights had amassed a store
of varied knowledge, which was patently improving his master's mind.
Archie was accustomed to quote him for most of his views on matters
other than ornithology and war.

"Do you mind going over to that corner and shuffling these slips?
Now, John, you draw first."

Mr. Palliser-Yeates extracted a slip from Lithgow's massive hand.

"Glenraden," he cried.  "Whew, I'm for it this time."

Leithen drew next.  His slip read Strathlarrig.

"Thank God, I've got old Claybody," said Lamancha.  "Unless you want him
very badly, Ned?"

Leithen shook his head.  "I'm content.  It would be a bad start to
change the draw."

"Sit down, Wattie," said Archie.  "Here's a dram for you.  We've summoned
you to a consultation.  I daresay you've been wonderin' what all this
fuss about secrecy has meant.  I'm going to tell you.  You were with
Jim Tarras, and you've often told me about his poachin'.  Well, these
three gentlemen want to have a try at the same game.  They're tired of
ordinary sport, and want something more excitin'.  It wouldn't do,
of course, for them to appear under their real names, so they've invented
a nom de guerre--that's a bogus name, you know.  They call themselves
collectively, as you might say, John Macnab.  John Macnab writes from
London to three proprietors, same as Jim Tarras used to do, and proposes
to take a deer or a salmon on their property between certain dates.
There's a copy of the letter, and here are the replies that
arrived tonight.  Just you read 'em."

Lithgow, without moving a muscle of his face, took the documents.
He nodded approvingly over the original letter.  He smiled broadly
at Colonel Raden's epistle, puzzled a little at Mr. Bandicott's,
and wrinkled his brows over that of the Edinburgh solicitors.
Then he stared into the fire, and emitted short grunts which might
have equally well been chuckles or groans.

"Well, what do you think of the chances?" asked Archie at length.

"Would the gentlemen be good shots?" asked Lithgow.

"Mr Palliser-Yeates, who has drawn Glenraden, is a very good shot,"
Archie replied, "and he has stalked on nearly every forest in Scotland.
Lord Lamancha--Charles, you're pretty good, aren't you?"

"Fair," was the answer.  "Good on my day."

"And Sir Edward Leithen is a considerable artist on the river.
Now, Wattie, you understand that they want to win--want to get the stags
and the salmon--but it's absolute sheer naked necessity that, whether
they fail or succeed, they mustn't be caught.  John Macnab must remain
John Macnab, an unknown blighter from London.  You know who Lord Lamancha
is, but perhaps you don't know that Sir Edward Leithen is a great lawyer,
and Mr. Pallisers-Yeates is one of the biggest bankers in the country."

"I ken all about the gentlemen," said Lithgow gravely.  "I was readin'
Mr Yeates's letter in The Times about the debt we was owin' America,
and I mind fine Sir Edward's speeches in Parliament about the
Irish Constitution.  I didna altogether agree with him."

"Good for you, Wattie.  You see, then, how desperately important it is
that the thing shouldn't get out.  Mr Tarras didn't much care if he was
caught, but if John Macnab is uncovered there will be a high and holy row.
Now you grasp the problem, and you've got to pull up your socks and
think it out.  I don't want your views to-night, but I should like
to have your notion of the chances in a general way.  What's the bettin'?
Twenty to one against?"

"Mair like a thousand," said Lithgow grimly.  "It will be verra,
verra deeficult.  It will want a deal o' thinkin'."  Then he added,
"Mr Tarras was an awfu' grand shot.  He would kill a runnin' beast
at fower hundred yards--aye, he could make certain of it."

"Good Lord, I'm not in that class," Palliser-Yeates exclaimed.

"Aye, and he was more than a grand shot.  He could creep up to
a sleepin' beast in the dark and pit a knife in its throat.
The sauvages in Africa had learned him that.  There was plenty
o' times when him and me were out that it was no possible to use
the rifle."

"We can't compete there," said Lamancha dolefully.

"But I wad not say it was impossible," Lithgow added more briskly.
"It will want a deal o' thinkin'.  It might be done on Haripol--I wadna
say but it might be done, but yon auld man at Glenraden will be ill
to get the better of.  And the Strathlarrig water is an easy water
to watch.  Ye'll be for only takin' shootable beasts, like Mr Tarras,
and ye'll not be wantin' to cleek a fish? It might be not so hard
to get a wee staggie, or to sniggle a salmon in one of the deep pots."

"No, we must play the game by the rules.  We're not poachers."

"Then it will be verra, verra deeficult."

"You understand," put in Lamancha, "that, though we count on your help,
you yourself mustn't be suspected.  It's as important for you as for us
to avoid suspicion, for if they got you it would implicate your master,
and that mustn't happen on any account."

"I ken that.  It will be verra, verra deeficult.  I said the odds were
a thousand to one, but I think ten thousand wad be liker the thing."

"Well, go and sleep on it, and we'll see you in the morning.  And tell
your wife I don't want any boys comin' up to the house with fish.
She must send elsewhere and buy 'em.  Good-night, Wattie."

When Lithgow had withdrawn the four men sat silent and meditative
in their chairs.  One would rise now and then and knock out his pipe,
but scarcely a word was spoken.  It is to be presumed that the thoughts
of each were on the task in hand, but Leithen's must have wandered.
"By the way, Archie," he said, "I saw a very pretty girl on the road
this afternoon, riding a yellow pony.  Who could she be?"

"Lord knows!" said Archie.  "Probably one of the Raden girls.
I haven't seen 'em yet."

When the clock struck eleven Sir Archie arose and ordered his guests
to bed.

"I think my toothache is gone," he said, switching off his turban and
revealing a ruffled head and scarlet cheek.  Then he muttered:
"A thousand to one!  Ten thousand to one! It can't be done, you know.
We've got to find some way of shortenin' the odds!"




CHAPTER 3


RECONNAISSANCE


Rosy-fingered Dawn, when, attended by mild airs and a sky of Italian blue,
she looked in at Crask next morning, found two members of the household
already astir.  Mr Palliser-Yeates, coerced by Wattie Lithgow, was
starting with bitter self-condemnation to prospect what his guide called
"the yont side o' Glenraden."  A quarter of an hour later Lamancha,
armed with a map and a telescope, departed alone for the crest of hill
behind which lay the Haripol forest.  After that peace fell on the place,
and it was not till the hour of ten that Sir Edward Leithen descended
for breakfast.

The glory of the morning had against his convictions made him cheerful.
The place smelt so good within and without, Mrs Lithgow's scones were so
succulent, the bacon so crisp, and Archie, healed of the toothache,
was so preposterous and mirthful a figure that Leithen found a faint zest
again in the contemplation of the future.  When Archie advised him to get
busy about the Larrig he did not complain, but accompanied his host
to the gun-room, where he studied attentively on a large-scale map
the three miles of the stream in the tenancy of Mr Bandicott.

It seemed to him that he had better equip himself for the part by some
simple disguise, so, declining Archie's suggestion of a kilt, he returned
to his bedroom to refit.  Obviously the best line was the tourist, so he
donned a stiff white shirt and a stiff dress collar with a tartan bow-tie
contributed from Sime's wardrobe.  Light brown boots in which he had
travelled from London took the place of his nailed shoes, and his thick
knickerbocker stockings bulged out above them.  Sime's watch-chain, from
which depended a football club medal, a vulgar green Homburg hat of
Archie's, and a camera slung on his shoulders completed the equipment.
His host surveyed him with approval.

"The Blackpool season is beginning," he observed.  "You're the born
tripper, my lad.  Don't forget the picture post cards."  A bicycle was
found, and the late Attorney-General zigzagged warily down the steep road
to the Larrig bridge.

He entered the highway without seeing a human soul, and according to plan
turned down the glen towards Inverlarrig.  There at the tiny post-office
he bought the regulation picture post cards, and conversed in what he
imagined to be the speech of Cockaigne with the aged post-mistress.
He was eloquent on the beauties of the weather and the landscape and not
reticent as to his personal affairs.  He was, he said, a seeker for
beauty-spots, and had heard that the best were to be found in the
demesne of Strathlarrig.  "It's private grund," he was told,
"but there's Americans bidin' there and they're kind folk and awfu'
free with their siller.  If ye ask at the lodge, they'll maybe let
ye in to photograph."  The sight of an array of ginger-beer bottles
inspired him to further camouflage, so he purchased two which he stuck
in his side-pockets.

East of the Bridge of Larrig he came to the chasm in the river above
which he knew began the Strathlarrig water.  The first part was a
canal-like stretch among bogs, which promised ill for fishing, but beyond
a spit of rock the Larrig curled in towards the road edge, and ran in
noble pools and swift streams under the shadow of great pines.
This, Leithen knew from the map, was the Wood of Larrigmore, a remnant
of the ancient Caledonian Forest.  By the water's edge the covert
was dark, but towards the roadside the trees thinned out, and the ground
was delicately carpeted with heather and thymy turf.  There grazed an
aged white pony, and a few yards off, on the shaft of a dilapidated
fish-cart, sat a small boy.

Leithen, leaning his bicycle against a tree, prospected the murky pools
with the air rather of an angler than a photographer, and in the process
found his stiff shirt and collar a vexation.  Also the ginger-beer bottles
bobbed unpleasantly at his side.  So, catching sight of the boy, he
beckoned him near.  "Do you like ginger-beer?" he asked, and in reply to
a vigorous nod bestowed the pair on him.  The child returned like a dog
to the shelter of the cart, whence might have been presently heard the
sound of gluttonous enjoyment.  Leithen, having satisfied himself that
no mortal could take a fish in that thicket, continued up-stream till he
struck the wall of the Strathlarrig domain and a vast castellated lodge.

The lodge-keeper made no objection when he sought admittance, and he
turned from the gravel drive towards the river, which now flowed
through a rough natural park.  For a fisherman it was the water
of his dreams.  The pools were long and shelving, with a strong stream
at the head and, below, precisely the right kind of boulders and
outjutting banks to shelter fish.  There were three of these pools--the
"Duke's," the "Black Scour," and "Davie's Pot," were the names Archie
had told him--and beyond, almost under the windows of the house,
"Lady Maisie's," conspicuous for its dwarf birches and the considerable
waterfall above it.  Here he made believe to take a photograph, though he
had no idea how a camera worked, and reflected dismally upon the
magnitude of his task.  The whole place was as bright and open as the
Horse Guards Parade.  The house commanded all four pools, which he knew
to be the best, and even at midnight, with the owner unsuspecting,
poaching would be nearly impossible.  What would it be when the owner
was warned, and legitimate methods of fishing were part of the contract?

After a glance at the house, which seemed to be deep in noontide slumber,
he made his inconspicuous way past the end of a formal garden to a reach
where the Larrig flowed wide and shallow over pebbles.  Then came a belt
of firs, and then a long tract of broken water which was obviously not
a place to hold salmon.  He realised, from his memory of the map, that
he must be near the end of the Strathlarrig beat, for the topmost mile
was a series of unfishable linns.  But presently he came to a noble pool.
It lay in a meadow where the hay had just been cut and was liker a bit
of Tweed or Eden than a Highland stream.  Its shores were low and on
the near side edged with fine gravel, the far bank was a green rise
unspoiled by scrub, the current entered it with a proud swirl,
washed the high bank, and spread itself out in a beautifully broken
tail, so that every yard of it spelled fish.  Leithen stared at it with
appreciative eyes.  The back of a moving monster showed in mid-stream
and automatically he raised his arm in an imaginary cast.

The next second he observed a man walking across the meadow towards him,
and remembered his character.  Directing his camera hastily at the
butt-end of a black-faced sheep on the opposite shore, he appeared to be
taking a careful photograph, after which he restored the apparatus to its
case and turned to reconnoitre the stranger.  This proved to be a
middle-aged man in ancient tweed knickerbockers of an outrageous pattern
known locally as the "Strathlarrig tartan."  He was obviously a
river-keeper, and was advancing with a resolute and minatory air.

Leithen took off his hat with a flourish.

"Have I the honour, sir, to address the owner of this lovely spot?" he
asked in what he hoped was the true accent of a tripper.

The keeper stopped short and regarded him sternly.

"What are ye daein' here?" he demanded.

"Picking up a few pictures, sir.  I inquired at your lodge, and was told
that I might presume upon your indulgence.  Pardon me, if I 'ave presumed
too far.  If I 'ad known that the proprietor was at 'and I would have
sought 'im out and addressed my 'umble request to 'imself."

"Ye're makin' a mistake.  I'm no the laird.  The laird's awa' about India.
But Mr Bandicott--that's him that's the tenant--has given strict orders
that naebody's to gang near the watter.  I wonder Mactavish at the lodge
hadna mair sense."

"I fear the blame is mine," said the agreeable tourist.  "I only asked
leave to enter the grounds, but the beauty of the scenery attracted me
to the river.  Never 'ave I seen a more exquisite spot."  He waved his
arm towards the pool.

"It's no that bad.  But ye maun awa' out o' this.  Ye'd better gang by
the back road, for fear they see ye frae the hoose."

Leithen followed him obediently, after presenting him with a cigarette,
which he managed to extract without taking his case from his pocket.
It should have been a fag, he reflected, and not one of Archie's
special Egyptians.  As they walked he conversed volubly.

"What's the name of the river?" he asked.  "Is it the Strathlarrig?"

"No, it's the Larrig, and that bit you like sae weel is the
Minister's Pool.  There's no a pool like it in Scotland."

"I believe you.  There is not," was the enthusiastic reply.

"I mean for fish.  Ye'll no ken muckle aboot fishin'."

"I've done a bit of anglin' at 'ome.  What do you catch here?
Jack and perch?"

"Jack and perch!" cried the keeper scornfully.  "Saumon, man.
Saumon up to thirty pounds' wecht."

"Oh, of course, salmon.  That must be a glorious sport.  But a friend
of mine, who has seen it done, told me it wasn't 'ard.  He said that
even I could catch a salmon."

"Mair like a saumon wad catch you.  Now, you haud down the back road,
and ye'll come out aside the lodge gate.  And dinna you come here again.
The orders is strict, and if auld Angus was to get a grip o' ye, I wadna
say what wad happen.  Guid day to ye, and dinna stop till ye're out
o' the gates."

Leithen did as he was bid, circumnavigated the house, struck a farm track,
and in time reached the high road.  It was a very doleful tourist who
trod the wayside heather past the Wood of Larrigmore.  Never had he seen
a finer stretch of water or one so impregnably defended.  No bluff or
ingenuity would avail an illicit angler on that open greensward,
with every keeper mobilised and on guard.  He thought less now of the
idiocy of the whole proceeding than of the folly of plunging in the dark
upon just that piece of river.  There were many streams where Jim
Tarras's feat might be achieved, but he had chosen the one stretch in
all Scotland where it was starkly impossible.

The recipient of the ginger-beer was still sitting by the shafts
of his cart.  He seemed to be lunching, for he was carving attentively
a hunk of cheese and a loaf-end with a gully-knife.  As he looked up
from his task Leithen saw a child of perhaps twelve summers, with a
singularly alert and impudent eye, a much-freckled face, and a thatch of
tow-coloured hair bleached almost white by the sun.  His feet were bare,
his trousers were those of a grown man, tucked up at the knees and
hitched up almost under his armpits, and for a shirt he appeared to
have a much-torn jersey.  Weather had tanned his whole appearance into
the blend of greys and browns which one sees on a hill-side boulder.
The boy nodded gravely to Leithen, and continued to munch.

Below the wood lay the half-mile where the Larrig wound sluggishly
through a bog before precipitating itself into the chasm above the
Bridge of Larrig.  Leithen left his bicycle by the roadside and crossed
the waste of hags and tussocks to the water's edge.  It looked a
thankless place for the angler.  The clear streams of the Larrig seemed
to have taken on the colour of their banks, and to drowse dark and deep
and sullen in one gigantic peat-hole.  In spite of the rain of yesterday
there was little current.  The place looked oily, stagnant, and
unfishable--a tract through which salmon after mounting the fall would
hurry to the bright pools above.

Leithen sat down in a clump of heather and lit his pipe.  Something might
be done with a worm after a spate, he considered, but any other lure was
out of the question.  The place had its merits for every purpose but
taking salmon.  It was a part of the Strathlarrig water outside the
park pale, and it was so hopeless that it was not likely to be
carefully patrolled.  The high road, it was true, ran near, but it was
little frequented.  If only....He suddenly sat up, and gazed intently
at a ripple on the dead surface.  Surely that was a fish on the move..
..He kept his eyes on the river, until he saw something else which made
him rub them, and fall into deep reflection....

He was roused by a voice at his shoulder.

"What for will they no let me come up to Crask ony mair?" the voice
demanded in a sort of tinker's whine.

Leithen turned and found the boy of the ginger-beer.

"Hullo! You oughtn't to do that, my son.  You'll give people heart disease.
What was it you asked?"

"What...for...will...they...no...let...me come...up to Crask...ony mair?"

"I'm sure I don't know.  What's crask?"

"Ye ken it fine.  It's the big hoose up the hill.  I seen you come doon
frae it yoursel' this mornin'."

Leithen was tempted to deny this allegation and assert his title of
tourist, but something in the extreme intelligence of the boy's face
suggested that such a course might be dangerous.  Instead he said, "Tell me
your name, and what's your business at Crask?"

"My name's Benjamin Bogle, but I get Fish Benjie frae most folks.  I've
sell't haddies and flukes to Crask these twa months.  But this mornin' I
was tell't no to come back, and when I speired what way, the auld wife shut
the door on me."

A recollection of Sir Archie's order the night before returned to Leithen's
mind, and with it a great sense of insecurity.  The argus-eyed child, hot
with a grievance, had seen him descend from Crask, and was therefore in a
position to give away the whole show.  What chance was there for secrecy
with this malevolent scout hanging around?

"Where do you live, Benjie?"

"I bide in my cart.  My father's in jyle, and my mither's lyin' badly in
Muirtown.  I sell fish to a' the gentry."

"And you want to know why you can't sell them at Crask?"

"Aye, I wad like to ken that.  The auld wife used to be a kind body and gie
me jeely pieces.  What's turned he into a draygon?"

Leithen was accustomed, in the duties of his profession, to quick decisions
on tactics, and now he took one which was destined to be momentous.

"Benjie," he said solemnly, "there's a lot of things in the world that I
don't understand, and it stands to reason that there must be more that you
don't.  I'm in a position in which I badly want somebody to help me.  I
like the look of you.  You look a trusty fellow and a keen one.  Is all
your time taken up selling haddies?"

"'Deed no.  Just twa hours in the mornin', and twa hours at nicht when I
gang doun to the cobles at Inverlarrig.  I've a heap o' time on my hands."

"Good.  I think I can promise that you may resume your trade at Crask.
But first I want you to do a job for me.  There's a bicycle lying by
the roadside.  Bring it up to Crask this evening between six and seven.
Have you a watch?"

"No, but I can tell the time braw and fine."

"Go to the stables and wait for me there.  I want to have a talk
with you."  Leithen produced half a crown, on which the grubby paw
of Fish Benjie instantly closed.

"And look here, Benjie.  You haven't seen me here, or anybody like me.
Above all, you didn't see me come down from Crask this morning.
If anybody asks you questions, you only saw a man on a bicycle on
the road to Inverlarrig."

The boy nodded, and his solemn face flickered for a second with
a subtle smile.

"Well, that's a bargain."  Leithen got up from his couch and turned down
the river, making for the Bridge of Larrig, where the highway crossed.
He looked back once, and saw Fish Benjie wheeling his bicycle into the
undergrowth of the wood.  He was in two minds as to whether he had done
wisely in placing himself in the hands of a small ragamuffin, who for
all he knew might be hand-in-glove with the Strathlarrig keepers.
But the recollection of Benjie's face reassured him.  He did not look
like a boy who would be the pet of any constituted authority;
he had the air rather of the nomad against whom the orderly waged war.
There had been an impish honesty in his face, and Leithen, who had
a weakness for disreputable urchins, felt that he had taken the
right course.  Besides, the young sleuth-hound had got on his trail,
and there had been nothing for it but to make him an ally.

He crossed the bridge, avoided the Crask road, and struck up hill
by a track which followed the ravine of a burn.  As he walked his mind
went back to a stretch on a Canadian river, a stretch of still unruffled
water warmed all day by a July sun.  It had been as full as it could hold
of salmon, but no artifice of his could stir them.  There in the later
afternoon had come an aged man from Boston, who fished with a light
trout rod and cast a deft line, and placed a curious little dry fly
several feet above a fish's snout.  Then, by certain strange manoeuvres,
he had drawn the fly under water.  Leithen had looked on and marvelled,
while before sunset that ancient man hooked and landed seven good
fish....Somehow that bit of shining sunflecked Canadian river
reminded him of the unpromising stretch of the Larrig he had
just been reconnoitring.

At a turn of the road he came upon his host, tramping homeward in
the company of a most unprepossessing hound.  I pause for an instant
to introduce Mackenzie.  He was a mongrel collie of the old
Highland stock, known as "beardies," and his touzled head, not unlike
an extra-shaggy Dandie Dinmont's, was set upon a body of immense length,
girth and muscle.  His manners were atrocious to all except his master,
and local report accused him of every canine vice except worrying sheep.
He had been christened "The Bluidy Mackenzie" after a noted persecutor
of the godly, by someone whose knowledge of history was greater
than Sir Archie's, for the latter never understood the allusion.
The name, however, remained his official one; commonly he was addressed
as Mackenzie, but in moments of expansion he was referred to by his
master as Old Bloody.

The said master seemed to be in a strange mood.  He was dripping wet,
having apparently fallen into the river, but his spirits soared,
and he kept on smiling in a light-hearted way.  He scarcely listened
to Leithen, when he told him of his compact with Fish Benjie.
"I daresay it will be all right."  He observed idiotically.
"Is your idea to pass off one of his haddies as a young salmon
on the guileless Bandicott?"  For an explanation of Sir Archie's
conduct the chronicler must retrace his steps.

After Leithen's departure it had seemed good to him to take the air,
so, summoning Mackenzie from a dark lair in the yard, he made his way
to the river--the beat below the bridge and beyond the high road,
which was on Crask ground.  There it was a broad brawling water,
boulder-strewn and shallow, which an active man could cross dry-shod
by natural stepping-stones.  Sir Archie sat for a time on the near shore,
listening to the sandpipers--birds which were his special favourites--and
watching the whinchats on the hill-side and the flashing white breasts
of the water-ousels.  Mackenzie lay beside him, an uneasy sphinx,
tormented by a distant subtle odour of badger.

Presently Sir Archie arose and stepped out on the half-submerged boulder.
He was getting very proud of the way he had learned to manage
his game leg, and it occurred to him that here was a chance of testing
his balance.  If he could hop across on the stones to the other side
he might regard himself as an able-bodied man.  Balancing himself with
his stick as a rope-dancer uses his pole, he in due course reached
the middle of the current.  After that it was more difficult, for
the stones were smaller and the stream more rapid, but with an occasional
splash and flounder he landed safely, to be saluted with a shower
of spray from Mackenzie, who had taken the deep-water route.

"Not so bad that, for a crock," he told himself, as he lay full length
in the sun watching the faint line of the Haripol hills overtopping
the ridge of Crask.

Half an hour was spent in idleness till the dawning of hunger warned him
to return.  The crossing as seen from this side looked more formidable,
for the first stones could only be reached by jumping a fairly broad
stretch of current.  Yet the jump was achieved, and with renewed
confidence Sir Archie essayed the more solid boulders.  All would
have gone well had not he taken his eyes from the stones and observed
on the bank beyond a girl's figure.  She had been walking by the
stream and had stopped to stare at the portent of his performance.
Now Sir Archie was aware that his style of jumping was not graceful
and he was discomposed by his sudden gallery.  Nevertheless, the thing
was so easy that he could scarcely have failed had it not been for
the faithful Mackenzie.  That animal had resolved to follow his master's
footsteps, and was jumping steadily behind him.  But three boulders
from the shore they jumped simultaneously, and there was not
standing-room for both.  Sir Archie, already nervous, slipped,
recovered himself, slipped again, and then, accompanied by Mackenzie,
subsided noisily into three feet of water.

He waded ashore to find himself faced by a girl in whose face concern
struggled with amusement.  He lifted a dripping hand and grinned.

"Silly exhibition, wasn't it?  All the fault of Mackenzie!  Idiotic brute
of a dog, not to remember my game leg!"

"You're horribly wet," the girl said, "but it was sporting of you to try
that crossing.  What about dry clothes?"

"Oh, no trouble about that.  I've only to get up to Crask."

"You're Sir Archibald Roylance, aren't you?  I'm Janet Raden.
I've been with papa to call on you, but you're never at home."

Sir Archie, having now got the water out of his eyes and hair was able
to regard his interlocutor.  He saw a slight girl with what seemed
to him astonishingly bright hair and very blue and candid eyes.
She appeared to be anxious about his dry clothes, for she led
the way up the bank at a great pace, while he lingered behind her.
Suddenly she noticed the limp.

"Oh, please forgive me, I forgot about your leg.  You had another smash,
hadn't you, besides the one in the war--steeplechasing, wasn't it?"

"Yes, but it didn't signify.  I'm all right again and get about anywhere,
but I'm a bit slower on the wing, you know."

"You're keen about horses?"

"Love 'em."

"So do I.  Agatha--that's my sister--doesn't care a bit about them.
She would like to live all the year at Glenraden, but--I'm ashamed
to say it--I would rather have a foggy November in Warwickshire
than August in Scotland.  I simply dream of hunting."

The ardent eyes and the young grace of the girl seemed marvellous things
to Sir Archie.  "I expect you go uncommon well," he murmured.

"No, only moderate.  I only get scratch mounts.  You see I stay with my
Aunt Barbara, and she's too old to hunt, and has nothing in her stables
but camels.  But this year..."  She broke off as she caught sight of
the pools forming round Sir Archie's boots.  "I mustn't keep you
here talking.  You be off home at once."

"Don't worry about me.  I'm wet for days on end when I'm watchin' birds
in the spring.  You were sayin' about this year?"

Her answer was a surprising question.  "Do you know anybody
called John Macnab?"

Sir Archibald Roylance was a resourceful mountebank and did not hesitate.

"Yes.  The distiller, you mean?  Dhuniewassel Whisky?  I've seen his
advertisements--'They drink Dhuniewassel, In cottage and castle--'
That chap?"

"No, no, somebody quite different.  Listen, please, if you're not
too wet, for I want you to help me.  Papa has had the most extraordinary
letter from somebody called John Macnab, saying he means to kill a stag
in our forest between certain dates, and daring us to prevent him.
He is going to hand over the beast to us if he gets it and pay
fifty pounds, but if he fails he is to pay a hundred pounds.
Did you ever hear of such a thing?"

"Some infernal swindler," said Archie darkly.

"No, he can't be.  You see the fifty pounds arrived this morning."

"God bless my soul!"

"Yes.  In Bank of England notes, posted from London.  Papa at first
wanted to tell him to go to--well, where Papa tells people he doesn't
like to go.  But I thought the offer so sporting that I persuaded him
to take up the challenge.  Indeed, I wrote the reply myself.
Mr Macnab said that the money was to go to a charity, so Agatha is
having the fifty pounds for her native weaving and dyeing--she's
frightfully keen about that.  But if we win the other fifty pounds papa
says the best charity he can think of is to prevent me breaking my neck
on hirelings, and I'm to have it to buy a hunter.  So I'm very anxious
to find out about Mr John Macnab."

"Probably some rich Colonial who hasn't learned manners."

"I don't think so.  His manners are very good, to judge by his letter.
I think he is a gentleman, but perhaps a little mad.  We simply must
beat him, for I've got to have that fifty pounds.  And--and I want you
to help me."

"Oh, well, you know--I mean to say--I'm not much of a fellow...."

"You're very clever, and you've done all kinds of things.
I feel that if you advised us we should win easily, for I'm sure
you had far harder jobs in the war."

To have a pretty young woman lauding his abilities and appealing
with melting eyes for his aid was a new experience in Sir Archie's life.
It was so delectable an experience that he almost forgot its
awful complications.  When he remembered them he flushed and stammered.

"Really, I'd love to, but I wouldn't be any earthly good.  I'm an old
crock, you see.  But you needn't worry--your Glenraden gillies will make
short work of this bandit....By Jove, I hope you get your hunter,
Miss Raden.  You've got to have it somehow.  Tell you what, if I've
any bright idea I'll let you know."

"Thank you so much.  And may I consult you if I'm in difficulties?"

"Yes, of course.  I mean to say, No.  Hang it, I don't know, for I don't
like interferin' with your father's challenge."

"That means you will.  Now, you mustn't wait another moment.  Good-bye.
Will you come over to lunch at Glenraden?"

Then she broke off and stared at him.  "I forgot.  Haven't you smallpox?"

"What! Smallpox? Oh, I see!  Has old Mother Claybody been putting
that about?"

"She came to tea yesterday twittering with terror, and warned us all
not to go within a mile of Crask."

Sir Archie laughed somewhat hollowly.  "I had a bad toothache and
my head tied up, and I daresay I said something silly, but I never
thought she would take it for gospel.  You see for yourself that I've
nothing the matter with me."

"You'll have pneumonia the matter with you, unless you hurry home.
Good-bye.  We'll expect you to lunch the day after to-morrow."
And with a wave of her hand she was gone.

The extraordinary fact was that Sir Archie was not depressed by the
new tangle which encumbered him.  On the contrary, he was in the best
of spirits.  He hobbled gaily up the by-road to Crask, listened
to Leithen, when he met him, with less than half an ear, and was happy
with his own thoughts.  I am at a loss to know how to describe the
first shattering impact of youth and beauty on a susceptible mind.
The old plan was to borrow the language of the world's poetry,
the new seems to be to have recourse to the difficult jargon
of psychologists and physicians; but neither, I fear, would suit
Sir Archie's case.  He did not think of nymphs and goddesses or
of linnets in spring; still less did he plunge into the depths
of a subconscious self which he was not aware of possessing.
The unromantic epithet which rose to his lips was "jolly."
This was for certain the jolliest girl he had ever met--regular
young sportswoman and amazingly good-lookin', and he was dashed
if she wouldn't get her hunter.  For a delirious ten minutes,
which carried him to the edge of the Crask lawn, he pictured
his resourcefulness placed at her service, her triumphant success,
and her bright-eyed gratitude.

Then he suddenly remembered that alliance with Miss Janet Raden
was treachery to his three guests.  The aid she had asked for could
only be given at the expense of John Macnab.  He was in the miserable
position of having a leg in both camps, of having unhappily received the
confidences of both sides, and whatever he did he must make a mess of it.
He could not desert his friends, so he must fail the lady; wherefore
there could be no luncheon for him, the day after to-morrow, since
another five minutes' talk with her would entangle him beyond hope.
There was nothing for it but to have a return of smallpox.
He groaned aloud.

"A twinge of that beastly toothache," he explained in reply to his
companion's inquiry.

When the party met in the smoking-room that night after dinner two
very weary men occupied the deepest arm-chairs.  Lamancha was struggling
with sleep; Palliser-Yeates was limp with fatigue, far too weary
to be sleepy.  "I've had the devil of a day," said the latter.
"Wattie took me at a racing gallop about thirty miles over bogs and crags.
Lord!  I'm stiff and footsore.  I believe I crawled more than ten miles,
and I've no skin left on my knees.  But we spied the deuce of a lot
of ground, and I see my way to the rudiments of a plan.  You start off,
Charles, while I collect my thoughts."

But Lamancha was supine.

"I'm too drunk with sleep to talk," he said.  "I prospected all
the south side of Haripol--all this side of the Reascuill, you know.
I got a good spy from Sgurr Mor, and I tried to get up Sgurr Dearg,
but stuck on the rocks.  That's a fearsome mountain, if you like.
Didn't see a blessed soul all day--no rifles out--but I heard a shot
from the Machray ground.  I got my glasses on to several fine beasts.
It struck me that the best chance would be in the corrie between Sgurr Mor
and Sgurr Dearg--there's a nice low pass at the head to get a stag
through and the place is rather tucked away from the rest of the forest.
That's as far as I've got at present.  I want to sleep."

Palliser-Yeates was in a very different mood.  With an ordnance map
spread out on his knees he expounded the result of his researches,
waving his pipe excitedly.

"It's a stiff problem, but there's just the ghost of a hope.
Wattie admitted that on the way home.  Look here, you fellows--Glenraden
is divided, like Gaul, into three parts.  There's the Home beat--all the
low ground of the Raden glen and the little hills behind the house.
Then there's the Carnbeg beat to the east, which is the best I fancy--very
easy going, not very high and with peat roads and tracks where you could
shift a beast.  Last there's Carnmore, miles from anywhere, with all
the highest tops and as steep as Torridon.  It would be the devil of
a business, if I got a stag there, to move it.  Wattie and I went round
the whole marches, mostly on our bellies.  No, we weren't seen--Wattie
took care of that.  What a noble shikari the old chap is!"

"Well, what's your conclusion?" Leithen asked.

Palliser-Yeates shook his head.  "That's just where I'm stumped.
Try to put yourself in old Raden's place.  He has only one stalker
and two gillies for the whole forest, for he's very short-handed,
and as a matter of fact he stalks his beasts himself.  He'll consider
where John Macnab is likeliest to have his try, and he'll naturally
decide on the Carnmore beat, for that's by far the most secluded.
You may take it from me that he has only enough men to watch
one beat properly.  But he'll reflect that John Macnab has got
to get his stag away, and he'll wonder how he'll manage it on Carnmore,
for there's only one bad track up from Inverlarrig.  Therefore he'll
conclude that John Macnab may be more likely to try Carnbeg,
though it's a bit more public.  You see, his decision isn't any easier
than mine.  On the whole, I'm inclined to think he'll plump for Carnmore,
for he must think John Macnab a fairly desperate fellow who will aim first
at killing his stag in peace, and will trust to Providence for the rest.
So at the moment I favour Carnbeg."

Leithen wrinkled his brow.  "There are three of us," he said.
"That gives us a chance of a little finesse.  What about letting
Charles or me make a demonstration against Carnmore, while you
wait at Carnbeg?"

"Good idea! I thought of that too."

"You'd better assume Colonel Raden to be in very full possession
of his wits," Leithen continued.  "The simple bluff won't do--he'll
see through it.  He'll think that John Macnab is the same wary kind
of old bird as himself.  I found out in the war that it didn't do
to underrate your opponent's brains.  He's pretty certain to expect
a feint and not to be taken in.  I'm for something a little subtler."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that you feint in one place, so that your opponent believes it
to be a feint and pays no attention--and then you sail in and get
to work in that very place."

Palliser-Yeates whistled.  "That wants thinking over....
How about yourself?"

"I've studied the river, and you never in your life saw such a hopeless
proposition,  All the good pools are as open as the Serpentine.
Wattie stated the odds correctly."

"Nothing doing there?"

"Nothing doing, unless I take steps to shorten the odds.
So I've taken in a partner."

The others stared, and even Lamancha woke up.

"Yes.  I interviewed him in the stable before dinner.  It's the little
ragamuffin who sells fish--Fish Benjie is the name he goes by.
Archie, I hope you don't mind, but I told him to resume his
morning visits.  They're my best chance for consultations."

"You're taking a pretty big risk, Ned," said his host.  "D'you mean
to say you've let that boy into the whole secret?"

"I've told him everything.  It was the only way, for he had
begun to suspect.  I admit it's a gamble, but I believe I can
trust the child.  I think I know a sportsman when I see him."

Archie still shook his head. "There's something else I may as
well tell you.  I met one of the Raden girls to-day--the younger--she
was on the bank when I fell into the Larrig.  She asked me point-blank
if I knew anybody called John Macnab?"

Lamancha was wide awake.  "What did you say?" he asked sharply.

"Oh, lied of course.  Said I supposed she meant the distiller.
Then she told me the whole story--said she had written the letter
her father signed.  She's mad keen to win the extra fifty quid.
For it means a hunter for her this winter down in Warwickshire.
Yes, and she asked me to help.  I talked a lot of rot about my game leg
and that sort of thing, but I sort of promised to go and lunch at
Glenraden the day after to-morrow."

"That's impossible," said Lamancha.

"I know it is, but there's only one way out of it.  I've got to
have smallpox again."

"You've got to go to bed and stay there for a month," said
Palliser-Yeates severely.  "Now, look here, Archie.  We simply can't
have you getting mixed up with the enemy, especially the enemy women.
You're much too susceptible and far too great an ass."

"Of course not," said Archie, with a touch of protest in his voice.
"I see that well enough, but it's a black look-out for me.  I wish to
Heaven you fellows had chosen to take your cure somewhere else.
I'm simply wreckin' all my political career.  I had a letter from my agent
to-night, and I should be touring the constituency instead of playin'
the goat here.  All I've got to say is that you've a dashed lot more
than old Raden against you.  You've got that girl, crazy about her hunter,
and anyone can see that she's clever as a monkey."

But the laird of Crask was not thinking of Miss Janet Raden's wits
as he went meditatively to bed.  He was wondering why her eyes were
so blue, and as he ascended the stairs he thought he had discovered
the reason.  Her hair was spun-gold, but she had dark eye-lashes.



CHAPTER 4


FISH BENJIE

On the roads of the north of Scotland, any time after the last
snow-wreaths have melted behind the dykes, you will meet a peculiar
kind of tinker.  They are not the copper-nosed scarecrows of the lowlands,
sullen and cringing, attended by sad infants in ramshackle perambulators.
Nor are they in any sense gipsies, for they have not the Romany speech
or colouring.  They travel the roads with an establishment, usually a
covered cart and one or more lean horses, and you may find their
encampments any day by any burnside.  Of a rainy night you can see their
queer little tents, shaped like a segment of sausage, with a fire hissing
at the door, and the horses cropping the roadside grass; of a fine
morning the women will be washing their duds on the loch shore and
their young fighting like ferrets among the shingle.  You will meet
with them in the back streets of the little towns, and at the back doors
of wayside inns, but mostly in sheltered hollows of the moor or
green nooks among the birches, for they are artists in choosing
camping-grounds.  They are children of Esau who combine a dozen crafts--
tinkering, fish-hawking, besom-making, and the like--with their natural
trades of horse-coping and poaching.  At once brazen and obsequious,
they beg rather as an art than a necessity; they will whine to a keeper
with pockets full of pheasant's eggs, and seek permission to camp
from a laird with a melting tale of hardships, while one of his salmon
lies hidden in the bracken on their cart floor.  The men are an
upstanding race, keen-eyed, resourceful, with humour in their cunning;
the women, till life bears too hardly on them, are handsome and
soft-spoken; and the children are burned and weathered like imps
of the desert.  Their speech is neither lowland nor highland,
but a sing-song Scots of their own, and if they show the Celt in
their secret ways there is a hint of Norse blood in the tawny hair
and blue eyes so common among them.

Ebenezer Bogle was born into this life, and for fifty-five years
travelled the roads from the Reay country to the Mearns and from
John o' Groats to the sea-lochs of Appin.  Sickness overtook him
one October when camped in the Black Isle, and, feeling the hand
of death on him, he sent for two people.  One was the nearest Free Kirk
minister--for Ebenezer was theologically of the old school; the other
was a banker from Muirtown.  What he said to the minister I do not know;
but what the banker said to him may be gathered from the fact that he
informed his wife before he died that in the Muirtown bank there lay
to his credit a sum of nearly three thousand pounds.  Ebenezer had been
a sober and careful man, and a genius at horse-coping.  He had bought
the little rough shelties of the North and the Isles, and sold them
at lowland fairs, he had dabbled in black cattle, he had done big trade
in sheep-skins when a snowstorm decimated the Sutherland flocks,
and he had engaged, perhaps, in less reputable ventures, which might
be forbidden by the law of the land, but were not contrary, so he
believed, to the Bible.  Year by year his bank balance had mounted,
for he spent little, and now he had a fortune to bequeath.
He made no will; all went to his wife, with the understanding that
it would be kept intact for his son; and in this confidence Ebenezer
closed his eyes.

The wife did not change her habit of life.  The son Benjamin accompanied
her as before in the long rounds between May and October, and in the
winter abode in the fishing quarter of Muirtown, and intermittently
attended school.  Presently his mother took a second husband, a Catholic
Macdonald from the West, for the road is a lonely occupation for
a solitary woman.  Her new man was a cheerful being--very little like
the provident Ebenezer--much addicted to the bottle and a lover of all
things but legitimate trade.  But he respected the dead man's wishes
and made no attempt to touch the hoard in the Muirtown bank; he was kind,
too, to the boy, and taught him many things that are not provided for
in the educational system of Scotland.  From him Benjie learned how
to take a nesting grouse, how to snare a dozen things, from hares
to roebuck, how to sniggle salmon in the clear pools, and how to poach
a hind when the deer came down in hard weather to the meadows.
He learned how to tell the hour by the sun, and to find his way
by the stars, and what weather was foretold by the starlings packing
at nightfall, or the crows sitting with their beaks to the wind,
or a badger coming home after daylight.  The boy knew how to make
cunning whistles from ash and rowan with which to imitate a snipe's bleat
or the call of an otter, and he knew how at all times and in all weathers
to fend for himself and find food and shelter.  A tough little nomad he
became under this tutelage, knowing no boys' games, with scarcely an
acquaintance of his age, but able to deal on equal terms with every
fisherman, gillie, and tinker north of the Highland line.

It chanced that in the spring of this year Mrs Bogle had fallen ill
for the first time in her life.  It was influenza, and, being neglected,
was followed by pneumonia, so that when May came she was in no condition
to take the road.  By ill luck her husband had been involved in a
drunken row, when he had assaulted two of his companions with such
violence and success that he was sent for six months to prison.
In these circumstances there was nothing for it but that Benjie
should set out alone with the cart, and it is a proof of the
stoutheartedness of the family tradition that his mother never questioned
the propriety of this arrangement.  He departed with her blessing,
and weekly despatched to her a much-blotted scrawl describing his doings.
There was something of his father's hard fibre in the child, for he was
a keen bargainer and as wary as a fox against cajolery.  He met friends
of his family who let him camp beside them, and with their young
he did battle, when they dared to threaten his dignity.  Benjie fought
in no orthodox way, but like a weasel, using every weapon of tooth
and claw, but in his sobbing furies he was unconquerable, and was soon
left in peace.  Presently he found that he preferred to camp alone,
so with his old cart and horse he made his way up and down the long glens
of the West to the Larrig.  There, he remembered, the fish trade had been
profitable in past years, so he sat himself down by the roadside,
to act a middleman between the fishing-cobles of Inverlarrig and
the kitchens of the shooting lodges.  It would be untrue to say that
this was his only means of livelihood, and I fear that the contents
of Benjie's pot, as it bubbled of an evening in the Wood of Larrigmore,
would not have borne inspection by any keeper who chanced to pass.
The weekly scrawls went regularly to his now convalescent mother,
and once a parcel arrived for him at the Inverlarrig post-office
containing a gigantic new shirt, which he used as a blanket.
For the rest, he lived as Robinson Crusoe lived, on the country-side
around him, asking no news of the outer world.

On the morning of the 27th of August he might have been seen,
a little after seven o'clock, driving his cart up the fine beech avenue
which led to Glenraden Castle.  It was part of his morning round,
but hitherto he had left his cart at the lodge-gate, and carried his fish
on foot to the house; wherefore he had some slight argument with the
lodge-keeper before he was permitted to enter.  He drove circumspectly
to the back regions, left his fish at the kitchen door, and then
proceeded to the cottage of the stalker, one Macpherson, which stood
by itself in a clump of firs.  There he waited for some time till
Mrs Macpherson came to feed her hens.  A string of haddocks
changed hands, and Benjie was bidden indoors, where he was given a cup
of tea, while old Macpherson smoked his early pipe and asked questions.
Half an hour later Benjie left, with every sign of amity, and drove
very slowly down the woodland road towards the haugh where the Raden,
sweeping from the narrows of the glen, spreads into broad pools
and shining shallows.  There he left the cart and squatted
inconspicuously in the heather in a place which commanded a prospect
of the home woods.  From his observations he was aware that one of
the young ladies regularly took her morning walk in this quarter.

Meantime in the pleasant upstairs dining-room of the Castle
breakfast had begun.  Colonel Alastair Raden, having read prayers
to a row of servants from a chair in the window--there was a family
tradition that he once broke off in a petition to call excitedly
his Maker's attention to a capercailzie on the lawn--and having finished
his porridge, which he ate standing, with bulletins interjected
about the weather, was doing good work on bacon and eggs.
Breakfast, he used to declare, should consist of no kickshaws
like kidneys and omelettes; only bacon and eggs, and plenty of 'em.
The master of the house was a lean old gentleman dressed in an ancient
loud-patterned tweed jacket and a very faded kilt.  Still erect as a post,
he had a barrack-square voice, and high-boned, aquiline face,
and a kindly but irritable blue eye.  His daughters were devoting what
time was left to them from attending to the breakfasts of three terriers
to an animated discussion of a letter which lay before them.
The morning meal at Glenraden was rarely interrupted by correspondence,
for the post did not arrive till the evening, but this missive had
been delivered by hand.

"He can't come," the younger cried.  "He says he's seedy again.
It may really be smallpox this time."

"Who can't come, and who has smallpox?" her father demanded.

"Sir Archibald Roylance.  I told you I met him and asked him to lunch
here to-day.  We really ought to get to know our nearest neighbour,
and he seems a very pleasant young man."

"I think he is hiding a dark secret," said the elder Miss Raden.
"Nobody who calls there ever finds him in--except Lady Claybody,
and then he told her he had smallpox.  Old Mr Bandicott said he went
up the long hill to Crask yesterday, and found nobody at home,
though he was perfectly certain he saw one figure slinking into
the wood and another moving away from a window.  I wonder if
Sir Archibald is really all right.  We don't know anything
about him, do we?"

"Of course he's all right--bound to be--dashed gallant sporting fellow.
Sorry he's not coming to luncheon--I want to meet him.  He's probably
afraid of Nettie, and I don't blame him, for she's a brazen hussy,
and he does well to be shy of old Bandicott.  I'm scared to death
by the old fellow myself."

"You know you've promised to let him dig in the Piper's Ring, Papa."

"I know I have, and I would have promised to let him dig up
my lawn to keep him quiet.  Never met a man with such a flow
of incomprehensible talk.  He had the audacity to tell me that
I was no more Celtic than he was, but sprung from some blackguard
Norse raiders a thousand years back.  Judging by the sketch he gave me
of their habits, I'd sooner the Radens were descended from Polish Jews."

"I thought him a darling," said his elder daughter, "and with such
a beautiful face."

"He may be a darling for all I know, but his head is stuffed with maggots.
If you admired him so much, why didn't you take him off my hands?
I liked the look of the young fellow and wanted to have a word with him.
More by token"--the Colonel was hunting about for the marmalade--"what
were you two plotting with him in the corner after dinner?"

"We were talking about John Macnab."

The Colonel's face became wrathful.

"Then I call it dashed unfilial conduct of you not to have brought me in.
There was I, deafened with the old man's chatter--all about a fellow
called Harald Blacktooth or Bottlenose or some such name, that he swears
is buried in my grounds and means to dig up--when I might have been
having a really fruitful conversation.  What was young Bandicott's
notion of John Macnab?"

"Mr Junius thinks he is a lunatic," said the elder Miss Raden.
She was in every way her sister's opposite, dark of hair and eye where
Janet was fair, tall where Janet was little, slow and quiet of voice
where Janet was quick and gusty.

"I entirely differ from him.  I think John Macnab is perfectly sane,
and probably a good fellow, though a dashed insolent one.
What's Bandicott doing about his river?"

"Patrolling it day and night between the 1st and 3rd of September.
He says he's taking no chances, though he'd bet Wall Street to a nickel
that the poor poop hasn't the frozenest outside."

"Nettie, he said nothing of the kind!"  Miss Agatha was indignant.
"He talks beautiful English, with no trace of an accent--all Bostonians
do, he told me."

"Anyhow, he asked what steps we were taking and advised us to get busy.
We come before him, you know....Heavens, papa, it begins to-morrow night!
Oh, and I did so want to consult Sir Archibald.  I'm sure he could help."

Colonel Raden, having made a satisfactory breakfast, was lighting a pipe.

"You need not worry, my dear.  I'm an old campaigner and have planned out
the thing thoroughly.  I've been in frequent consultation with Macpherson,
and yesterday we had Alan and James Fraser in, and they entirely agreed."

He produced from his pocket a sheet of foolscap on which had been roughly
drawn a map of the estate.

"Now, listen to me.  We must assume this fellow Macnab to be
in possession of his senses, and to have more or less reconnoitred
the ground--though I don't know how the devil he can have managed it,
for the gillies have kept their eyes open, and nobody's been seen
near the place.  Well, here are the three beats.  Unless young Bandicott
is right and the man's a lunatic, he won't try the Home beat,
for the simple reason that a shot there would be heard by twenty people
and he could not move a beast twenty yards without being caught.
There remains Carnmore and Carnbeg.  Macpherson was clear that he would
try Carnmore, as being farthest away from the house.  But I, with my old
campaigning experience"--here Colonel Raden looked remarkably cunning--
"pointed out at once that such reasoning was rudimentary.
I said 'He'll bluff us, and just because he thinks that we think
he'll try Carnmore, he'll try Carnbeg.  Therefore, since we can only
afford to watch one beat thoroughly, we'll watch Carnbeg.'  What do you
think of that, my dears?"

"I think you're very clever, papa," said Agatha.  "I'm sure you're right."

"And you, Nettie?"

Janet was knitting her brows and looking thoughtful.

"I'm ...not...so...sure.  You see we must assume that John Macnab
is very ingenious.  He probably made his fortune in the colonies
by every kind of dodge.  He's sure to be very clever."

"Well put, my dear," said her father, "it's just that cleverness
that I propose to match."

"But do you think you have quite matched it?  You have tried to imagine
what John Macnab would be thinking, and he will have done just the same
by you.  Why shouldn't he have guessed the solution you have reached
and be deciding to go one better?"

"How do you mean, Nettie?" asked her puzzled parent.  He was inclined
to be annoyed, but experience had taught him that his younger daughter's
wits were not to be lightly disregarded.

Nettie took the estate map from his hand and found a stump of pencil
in the pocket of her jumper.

"Please look at this, papa.  Here is A and B.  B offers a better chance,
so Macpherson says John Macnab will take B.  You say, acutely, that
John Macnab is not a fool, and will try to bluff us by taking A.
I say that John Macnab will have anticipated your acumen."

"Yes, yes," said her father impatiently.  "And then?"

"And then will take B after all."

The Colonel stood rapt in unpleasant meditation for the space
of five seconds....

"God bless my soul!" he cried.  "I see what you mean.  Confound it,
of course he'll go for Carnmore.  Lord, this is a puzzle.
I must see Macpherson at once.  Are you sure you're right, Nettie?"

"I'm not in the least sure.  We've only a choice of uncertainties,
and must gamble.  But, as far as I see, if we must plump for one
we should plump for Carnmore."

Colonel Raden departed from his study, after summoning Macpherson
to that shrine of the higher thought, and Janet Raden, after one
or two brief domestic interviews, collected her two terriers and set out
for her morning walk.  The morning was as fresh and bright as April,
the rain in the night had set every burn singing, and the thickets
and lawns were still damp where the sun had not penetrated.
Her morning walk was wont to be a scamper, a thing of hops, skips,
and jumps, rather than a sedate progress; but on this occasion,
though two dogs and the whole earth invited to hilarity, she walked
slowly and thoughtfully.  The mossy broken tops of Carnbeg showed
above a wood of young firs, and to the right rose the high blue peaks
of the Carnmore ground.  On which of these on the morrow would John
Macnab begin his depredations?  He had two days for his exploit;
probably he would make his effort on the second day, and devote
the first to confusing the minds of the defence.  That meant that
the problem would have to be thought out anew each day, for the alert
intelligence of John Macnab--she now pictured him as a sort of
Sherlock Holmes in knicker-bockers--would not stand still.
The prospect exhilarated, but it also alarmed her; the desire to
win a new hunter was now a fixed resolution; but she wished she had
a colleague.  Agatha was no use, and her father, while admirable
in tactics, was weak in strategy; she longed more than ever for the help
of that frail vessel, Sir Archie.

Her road led her by a brawling torrent through the famous Glenraden
beechwood to the spongy meadows of the haugh, beyond which could be seen
the shining tides of the Raden sweeping to the high-backed bridge across
which ran the road to Carnmore.  The haugh was all bog-myrtle and heather
and bracken, sprinkled with great boulders which the river during
the ages had brought down from the hills.  Half a mile up it stood
the odd tumulus called the Piper's Ring, crowned with an ancient
gnarled fir, where reposed, according to the elder Bandicott,
the dust of that dark progenitor, Harald Blacktooth.  If Mr Bandicott
proposed to excavate there he had his work cut out; the place was
encumbered with giant stones since a thousand floods had washed its
sides since it first received the dead Viking.  Great birch woods
from both sides of the valley descended to the stream, thereby making
the excellence of the Home beat, for the woodland stag is a heavier
beast than his brother of the high tops.

Close to the road, in a small hollow where one of the rivulets from
the woods cut its way through the haugh, she came on an ancient cart
resting on its shafts, an ancient horse grazing on a patch of turf
among the peat, and a small boy diligently whittling his way through
a pile of heather roots.  The urchin sprang to his feet and saluted
like a soldier.

"Please, lady," he explained in a high falsetto whine, "I've gotten
permission from Mr Macpherson to make heather besoms on this muir.
He's been awfu' kind to me, lady."

"You're the boy who sells fish?  I've seen you on the road."

"Aye, lady, I'm Fish Benjie.  I sell my fish in the mornin's and evenin's,
and I've a' the day for other jobs.  I've aye wanted to come here,
for it's the grandest heather i' the country-side; and Mr Macpherson,
he kens I'll do nae harm, and I've promised no to kindle a fire."

The child with the beggar's voice looked at her with such sage and
solemn eyes that Janet, who had a hopeless weakness for small boys,
sat down on a sun-warmed hillock and stared at him, while he turned
resolutely to business.

"If you're hungry, Benjie," she said, "and they won't let you make
a fire, you can come up to the Castle and get tea from Mrs Fraser.
Tell her I sent you."

"Thank you, lady, but if you please, I was gaun to my tea at
Mrs Macpherson's.  She's fell fond o' my haddies, and she tell't
me to tak a look in when I stoppit work.  I'm ettlin' to be here
for a guid while."

"Will you come every day?"

"Aye, every day about eight o'clock, and bide till maybe five in
the afternoon when I go down to the cobles at Inverlarrig."

"Now, look here, Benjie.  When you're sitting quietly working here
I want you to keep your eyes open, and if you see any strange man,
tell Mr Macpherson.  By strange man I mean somebody who doesn't belong
to the place.  We're rather troubled by poachers just now."

Benjie raised a ruminant eye from his besom.

"Aye, lady.  I seen a queer man already this mornin'.  He cam up the road
and syne started off over the bog.  He was sweatin' sore, and there was
twa men from Strathlarrig wi' him carryin' picks and shovels....Losh,
there he is comin' back."

Following Benjie's pointing finger Janet saw, approaching her from
the direction of the Piper's Ring, a solitary figure which laboured
heavily among the peat-bogs.  Presently it was revealed as an elderly man
wearing a broad grey wide-awake and a suit of flannel knickerbockers.
His enormous horn spectacles clearly did not help his eyesight,
for he had almost fallen over the shafts of the fish-cart before
he perceived Janet Raden.  He removed his hat, bowed with an antique
courtesy, and asked permission to recover his breath.

"I was on my way to see your father," he said at length.  "This morning
I have prospected the barrow of Harald Blacktooth, and it is clear to me
that I can make no progress unless I have Colonel Raden's permission
to use explosives.  Only the very slightest use, I promise you.
I have located, I think, the ceremonial entrance, but it is blocked with
boulders which it would take a gang of navvies to raise with crowbars.
A discreet application of dynamite would do the work in half an hour.
I cannot think that Colonel Raden would object to my using it when
I encounter such obstacles.  I assure you it will not spoil the look
of the barrow."

"I'm sure papa will be delighted.  You're certain the noise won't
frighten the deer.  You know the Piper's Ring is in the forest."

"Not in the least, my dear young lady.  The reports will be very slight,
scarcely louder than a rifle-shot.  I ought to tell you that I am
an old hand at explosives, for in my young days I mined in Colorado,
and recently I have employed them in my Alaska researches...."

"If we go home now," said Janet, rising, "we'll just catch papa before
he goes out.  You're very warm, Mr Bandicott, and I think you would
be the better for a rest and a drink."

"I certainly should, my dear.  I was so eager to begin that I bolted
my breakfast, and started off before Junius was ready.  He proposes to
meet me here."

Benjie, left alone, wrought diligently at his heather roots, whistling
softly to himself, and every now and then raising his head to scan
the haugh and the lower glen.  Presently a tall young man appeared,
who was identified as the younger American, and who was duly directed
to follow his father to the Castle.  The two returned in a little while,
accompanied by Agatha Raden, and, while the elder Mr Bandicott hastened
to the Piper's Ring, the young people sauntered to the Raden bridge
and appeared to be deep in converse.  "That twa's weel agreed,"
was Benjie's comment.  A little before one o'clock the party adjourned
to the Castle, presumably for luncheon, and Benjie, whose noon-tide meal
was always sparing, nibbled a crust of bread and a rind of cheese.
In the afternoon Macpherson and one of the gillies strolled past,
and the head-stalker proved wonderfully gracious, adjuring him, as Janet
had done, to keep his eyes open and report the presence of any stranger.
"There'll be the three folk from Strathlarrig howkin' awa there, but if
ye see anybody else, away up to the house and tell the wife.
They'll no be here for any good."  Benjie promised fervently.
"I've grand een, Mr Macpherson, sir, and though they was to be crawlin'
like a serpent I'd be on them."  The head-stalker observed that he was
a "gleg one," and went his ways.

Despite his industry Benjie was remarkably observant that day,
but he was not looking for poachers.  He had suddenly developed an
acute interest in the deer.  His unaided eyes were as good as the
ordinary man's telescope, and he kept a keen watch on the fringes
of the great birch woods.  The excavation at the Piper's Ring kept away
any beasts from the east side of the haugh, but on the west bank of
the stream he saw two lots of hinds grazing, with one or two young stags
among them, and even on the east bank, close in to the edge of the river,
he saw hinds with calves.  He concluded that on the fringes of the Raden
the feeding must be extra good, and, as a steady west wind was blowing,
the deer there would not be alarmed by Mr Bandicott's quest.
Just after he had finished his bread and cheese he was rewarded with
the spectacle of a hummel, a great fellow of fully twenty stone,
who rolled in a peat hole and then stood blowing in the shallow water
as unconcerned as if he had been on the top of Carnmore.
Later in the afternoon he saw a good ten-pointer in the same place,
and a little later an eight-pointer with a damaged horn.
He concluded that that particular hag was a favourite mud-bath
for stags, and that with the wind in the west it was no way
interfered with by the activities at the Piper's Ring.

About four o'clock Benjie backed the old horse into the shafts,
and jogged up the beech-avenue to Mrs Macpherson's where he was stayed
with tea and scones.  There was a gathering outside the door
of Macpherson himself and the two gillies, and a strange excitement
seemed to have fallen on that stolid community.  Benjie could not
avoid--indeed, I am not sure that he tried to avoid--hearing scraps
of their talk.  "I've been a' round Carnmore," said Alan, "and I seen
some fine beasts.  They're mostly in a howe atween the two tops,
and a man at the Grey Beallach could keep an eye on all the good ground."
"Aye, but there's the Carn Moss, and the burnheads--there will be beasts
there too," said James Fraser.  "There will have to be a man there,
for him at the Grey Beallach would not ken what was happening."
"And what about Corrie Gall?" asked Macpherson fiercely.
"Ye canna post men on Carnmore--they will have to keep moving;
it is that awful broken ground."  "Well, there's you and me and James,"
said Alan, "and there's Himself."  "And that's the lot of us,
and every man wanted."  said Macpherson.  "It's what I was always
saying--ye will need every man for Carnmore, and must let Carnbeg alone,
or ye can watch Carnbeg and not go near Carnmore.  We're far ower few."
"I wass thinking," said James Fraser, "that the youngest leddy might
be watching Carnbeg."  "Aye, James"--this satirically from
Macpherson--"and how would the young leddy be keeping a wild man
from killing a stag and getting him away?"  "'Deed, I don't ken,"
said the puzzled James, "without she took a gun with her and
had a shot at him."

Benjie drove quietly to Inverlarrig for his supply of fish, and did not
return to his head-quarters in the Wood of Larrigmore till nearly
seven o'clock.  At eight, having cooked and eaten his supper,
he made a simple toilet, which consisted in washing the fish-scales
and the stains of peat from his hands, holding his head in the river,
parting his damp hair with a broken comb, and putting over his shoulders
a waterproof cape, which had dropped from some passing conveyance
and had been found by him on the road.  Thus accoutred, he crossed
the river and by devious paths ascended to Crask.

He ensconced himself in the stable, where he was greeted sourly by
the Bluidy Mackenzie, who was tied up in one of the stalls.
There he occupied himself in whistling strathspeys and stuffing
a foul clay pipe with the stump of a cigar which he had picked up
in the yard.  Benjie smoked not for pleasure, but from a sense
of duty, and a few whiffs were all he could manage with comfort.
The gloaming had fallen before he heard his name called, and Wattie
Lithgow appeared.  "Ye're there, ye monkey?  The gentlemen are
asking for ye.  Quick and follow me.  They're in a awfu' ill key
the nicht and maunna be keepit waitin'."

There certainly seemed trouble in the smoking-room when Benjie
was ushered in.  Lamancha was standing on the hearth-rug with a letter
crumpled in his hand, and Sir Archie, waving a missive, was excitedly
confronting him.  The other two sat in arm-chairs with an air of
protest and dejection.

"I forgot all about the infernal thing till I got Montgomery's letter.
The 4th of September!  Hang it, my assault on old Claybody is timed
to start on the 5th.  How on earth can I get to Muirtown and back
and deliver a speech, and be ready for the 5th?  Besides, it betrays
my presence in this part of the world.  It simply can't be done...and
yet I don't know how on earth to get out of it?  Apparently the thing
was arranged months ago."

"You're for it all right, my son," cried Sir Archie, "and so am I.
Here's the beastly announcement.  'A Great Conservative Meeting will
be held in the Town Hall, Muirtown, on Thursday, September 4th,
to be addressed by the Right Hon. the Earl of Lamancha, M.P., His
Majesty's Secretary of State for the Dominions.  The chair will be
taken at 3 p.m. by His Grace the Duke of Angus, K.G.  Among the speakers
will be Colonel Wavertree, M.P., the Hon. W.J. Murdoch, Ex-Premier of
New Caledonia, and Captain Sir Archibald Roylance, D.S.O., prospective
Conservative candidate for Wester Ross.'  Oh, will he? Not by a
long chalk!  Catch me going to such a fiasco, with Charles hidin' here
and the show left to the tender mercies of two rotten bad speakers
and a prosy chairman."

"Did you forget about it too?" Leithen asked.

"'Course I did," said Archie wildly.  "How could I think of anything
with you fellows turnin' my house into a den of thieves?  I forgot about
it just as completely as Charles, only it doesn't matter about me,
and it matters the devil of a lot about him.  I don't stand an earthly
chance of winnin' the seat, if, first of all, I mustn't canvass because
of smallpox, and, second, my big meetin', on which all my fellows counted,
is wrecked by Charles playin' the fool."

Lamancha's dark face broke into a smile.

"Don't worry, old chap.  I won't let you down.  But it looks as if I
must let down John Macnab, and just when I was gettin' keen about him..
..Hang it, no! There must be a way.  I'm not going to be beaten
either by Claybody or this damned Tory rally.  Ned, you slacker,
what's your advice?"

"Have a try at the double event," Leithen drawled.  "You'll probably
make a mess of both, but it's a sporting proposition."

Archie's face brightened.  "You don't realise how sportin' a proposition
it is.  The Claybodys will be there, and they'll be all over you--brother
nobleman, you know, and you goin' to poach their stags next day!
Hang it, why shouldn't you turn the affair into camouflage? 'Out of my
stony griefs Bethel I'll raise,' says the hymn....We'll have to think
the thing out ve-ry carefully.--Anyway, Charles, you've got to help me
with my speech.  I don't mind so much lyin' doggo here if I can put in
a bit of good work on the 5th....Now, Benjie my lad, for your report."

Benjie, not without a certain shyness, cleared his throat and began.
He narrated how, following his instructions, he had secured Macpherson's
permission to cut heather for besoms on the Raden haugh.  He had duly
taken up his post there, had remained till four o'clock, and had seen
such and such people and heard this and that talk.  He recounted what
he could remember of the speeches of Macpherson and the gillies.

"They've got accustomed to the sight of you, I suppose," Palliser-Yeates
said at length.

"Aye, they're accustomed right enough.  Both the young lady and Macpherson
was tellin' me to keep a look-out for poachers."  Benjie chuckled.

"Then to-morrow you begin to move up to the high ground by the Carnmore
peat-road.  Still keep busy at your besoms.  You understand what I
want you for, Benjie?  If I kill a stag I have to get it off Glenraden
land, and your old fish-cart won't be suspected.'

"Aye, I see that fine.  But I've been thinkin' that there's maybe
a better way."

"Go ahead, and let's have it."

Benjie began his speech nervously, but he soon warmed to it, and borrowed
a cigar-box and the fire-irons to explain his case.  The interest of his
hearers kindled, until all four men were hanging on his words.
When he concluded and had answered sundry questions, Sir Archie
drew a deep breath and laughed excitedly.

"I suppose there's nothing in that that isn't quite cricket..
..I thought I knew something about bluff, but this--this absolutely
vanquishes the band.  Benjie, I'm goin' to have you taught poker.
You've the right kind of mind for it."



CHAPTER 5


THE ASSAULT ON GLENRADEN

Shortly after midnight of the 28th day of August three men foregathered
at the door of Macpherson's cottage, and after a few words took each
a different road into the dark wastes of wood and heather.
Macpherson contented himself with a patrol of the low ground in the glen,
for his legs were not as nimble as they once had been and his back
had a rheumaticky stiffness.  Alan departed with great strides for
the Carnbeg tops, and James Fraser, the youngest and the leanest,
set out for Carnmore, with the speed of an Indian hunter....Darkness gave
place to the translucence of early dawn: the badger trotted home from
his wanderings: the hill-fox barked in the cairns to summon his household:
sleepy pipits awoke: the peregrine who lived above the Grey Beallach
drifted down into the glens to look for breakfast: hinds and calves
moved up from the hazel shows to the high fresh pastures: the tiny
rustling noises of night disappeared in that hush which precedes the
awakening of life: and then came the flood of morning gold from behind
the dim eastern mountains, and in an instant the earth had wheeled
into a new day.  A thin spire of smoke rose from Mrs Macpherson's
chimney, and presently the three wardens of the marches arrived
for breakfast.  They reported that the forest was still unviolated,
that no alien foot had yet entered its sacred confines.  Herd-boys,
the offspring of Alan and James Fraser, had taken up their post
at key-points, so that if a human being was seen on the glacis of
the fort the fact would at once be reported to the garrison.

"I'm thinkin' he'll no come to-day," said Macpherson after this third
cup of tea.  "It will be the morn.  The day he will be tryin' to confuse
our minds, and that will no be a difficult job wi' you, Alan, my son."

"He'll come in the da-ark," said Alan crossly.

"And how would he be gettin' a beast in the dark?  The Laird was sayin'
that this man John Macnab was a gra-and sportsman.  He will not be
shootin' at any little staggie, but takin' a sizeable beast, and it's
not a howlet could be tellin' a calf from a stag in these da-ark nights.
Na, he will not shoot in the night, but he might be travellin' in
the night and gettin' his shot in the early mornin'."

"What for," Alan asked, "should he not be havin' his shot in the gloamin'
and gettin' the beast off the ground in the da-ark?"

"Because we will be watchin' all hours of the day.  Ye heard what the
Laird said, Alan Macdonald, and you, James Fraser.  This John Macnab
is not to shoot a Glenraden beast at all, at all, but if he shoots one
he is not to move it one foot.  If it comes to fightin', you are young
lads and must break the head of him.  But the Laird said for God's sake
you was to have no guns, but to fight like honest folks with your fists,
and maybe a wee bit stick.  The Laird was sayin' the law was on our side,
except for shootin'....Now, James Fraser, you will take the outer marches
the day, and keep an eye on the peat-roads from Inverlarrig, and you,
Alan, will watch Carnbeg, and I will be takin' the wo