“Oh, I see. Flinging me down on the ground like that is an old ceremony, is it? They had some queer ceremonies among the Carroways. There was one, I remember, when the Chief put two fingers in the butter and hoicked out a great blob of it which he popped into my mouth before I could stop him. I was just going to spit it out when the fellow who was taking me around the reservation dug me in the ribs and whispered the Chief was paying me the highest compliment a Carroway Chief can pay anybody. He said what I had to do was to swallow the butter, rub my belly, turn up my eyes to express a sort of delirium of delight, and if possible eructate. He said if I could manage even the feeblest little eructation I was a blood-brother of the Carroways for life. But could I contrive even the merest hint of an eructation? No, sir, I could not. I was as dumb as a flute in the window of a music-store. If I’d been told I’d be scalped unless I could produce a suitable response to that blob of butter I could never have arranged …”

“Hush, Duncan wants us to crawl along and hear his plan of action,” Ben Nevis interrupted. “Keep as flat as you can. Now you see why I was so anxious for you to change your clothes.”

“Not half as anxious as I’ll be to change them when I’ve crawled along a bit further like this.”

“We may have to crawl a mile or so like this,” said Ben Nevis.

“A mile?” his guest ejaculated. “Isn’t deer-stalking more of a sport for crocodiles than human beings?”

Presently they reached the spot where Duncan was surveying the ridge running along the horizon from the great black precipices of Ard Dubh.

“It’s himself,” he said to Ben Nevis, awe, exultation and greed mingled in the tone of his voice.

“Not the muckle hart of Ben Glass?”

“It’s himself,” Duncan repeated. “I would know him if the eyes of me did not know any thing else at all.”

Ben Nevis turned to his guest.

“You’re in luck, Royde. I heard he’d been seen feeding between Ben Booey and Ben Glass the last week or so. We’ve been trying to get that hart for the last five years. It was an old gillie from the Findhorn country first called him the muckle hart. They don’t use that word any longer around here.”

“What’s it mean?”