Duncan slowly swept with his glass the craggy and precipitous horizon, the sides of which were green-striped with the courses of innumerable burns descending to the great flat where they were standing beside a small black lochan.

“There’s a hell of a lot of flies and gnats and midges around here,” Royde remarked.

“Rain on the way,” said Ben Nevis. “Well, we can do with it. The country’s parched.”

“It’s not so darned parched as all that,” his guest replied. “I’ve been up to my knees half a dozen times already in bog. Blast these midges!”

“They’ll get used to you in time,” Ben Nevis assured him.

“Hell, I don’t care whether they get used to me. The question is, ‘will I get used to them?’”

“You’re fresh blood,” Ben Nevis explained.

“Oh, I knew I was some kind of a prize-sucker all right. Oi!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Why, some flat grey brute of a fly landed on me and planted the needle of his syringe about an inch into my hand. Gosh, the sunnavabitch has drawn blood. What would you say to that now?”

“It must have been a cleg,” Ben Nevis decided. “You’d better light up a cigar.”

Chester Royde took his host’s advice and had just lighted a big Larrañaga Corona when Ben Nevis with a muffled bark bade him throw himelf down on the ground. As he seemed inclined to question this order, the Chieftain flung an arm round his shoulder and by falling prone himself fetched his guest down with him.

“Say, what’s the big idea?” asked Royde, whose Larrañaga Corona had planted itself between a couple of bog-asphodels.

“A stag,” said Ben Nevis.

“Where?”

“Duncan has seen his antlers above Drumstickit, the ridge rising west from Ardoo.”

“Ah, do what? I can’t do more than I’m doing with my nose routing about in this god-awful marsh. Still, stalking’s stalking and I’ll do anything you like.”

“You mustn’t mind if I seem a bit ceremonious, Royde,” the Chieftain said. “We keep very strictly to traditional methods at this sport.”