“You know, Royde,” said his host enthusiastically, “I believe you’re going to get this fellow this afternoon.”

“You do?” the other countered dubiously. “Well, I can’t say I feel quite so confident about that. In fact I’ve a hunch I’m not going to get this fellow this afternoon.”

“Oh, you mustn’t take up that attitude. You mustn’t really,” the Chieftain begged. “Confidence is half the battle in stalking. What you want to say to yourself all the time as we crawl along Drumstickit is, ‘I’m going to get that hart. I’m going to plant my bullet in his shoulder.’ Now then, forward! We have a long way to go yet.”

There were many moments during that endless crawl along the top of the narrow ridge known as Drumstickit when Chester Royde wondered why he had bought Knocknacolly for the sake of the twelve stags he was supposed to shoot upon its forest every year. There were many moments when he wondered what it was that had so fascinated him about life in the Highlands of Scotland. There was one bitter moment when, in crawling over what looked like a patch of bright short grass, he had sunk into it like the hippopotamus in whose nature he had discovered a kinship with the muckle hart of Ben Glass, and had asked himself what mad impulse had led him to book a state-room for himself and Carrie in the Ruritania in which to cross the Atlantic when they might have spent a perfectly good holiday in Vermont.

“Hush, don’t make so much noise,” Ben Nevis whispered hoarsely. “We’re getting pretty near now.”

“But my mouth’s full of some kind of vegetable matter,” Royde protested. “I’m only expectorating.”

“You’d better swallow it,” Ben Nevis advised. “It won’t do you any harm. And keep down closer than ever up this rise. We ought to sight him when we get to the top. You’re going to have one of the great moments of your life in another few minutes.”

“If I live to see it,” Royde muttered to himself, combing bits of moss off his tongue with his teeth.

But when, drenched to the skin, aching in every bone, and itching acutely, Chester Royde Jr. peered over a clump of heather to get his first sight of the muckle hart of Ben Glass there was no sign of him on what was left of Drumstickit before the long ridge was absorbed by the steeps of Ard Dubh. It was idle for Duncan to clap his spyglass to his eye and sweep it round. There was no stag.

“That’s extraordinary,” Ben Nevis exclaimed. “That hart’s uncanny. He couldn’t have winded us. It must have been sheer instinct which made him move.”