‘The damn fools!’ I raged aloud, ‘to hang their snare too low and leave the brute in agony.’

I was so angry that I forgot to be wary. The stag’s pain could scarcely be listened to. I took my handkerchief and bound my sheath-knife to the muzzle of the rifle like a bayonet. When the deer ceased to struggle and hung quietly I guessed for its heart and drove the weapon with all my strength at the vague bulk. I drew back as fast as I could recover from the thrust. The beast reared itself for the last time. It was a lucky stroke. The random blade had pierced a vital place. The sweeping horns loomed over me with the sky behind them; the deer uttered a sound between groan and cough. Frothy blood shaken from its nostrils in the final convulsion fell on my face. The stag fell, dragging the tree-top into a great bow as the dead weight came on it. When I was sure the beast was dead I loosened the wire from its neck and cut off its head and flung it in the river. I gralloched the carcass and rolled the forequarters after the head and hid the haunches on a bluff that I could not mistake, to await my return. I was glad to have venison so easily although the brute’s cruel death troubled my mind. I consoled myself with the thought that I had punished whoever set the snare. I could fancy the poacher’s anger, and I told myself, ‘Serve him right,’ yet the stag’s breath was still in my ears. I felt implicated in needless brutality. I went ahead towards Gallovie more rapidly than I had travelled heretofore. Anger ousted fear and made my previous caution seem cowardly. As I walked a new thought struck me. It was very strange that a poacher should dare to set a trap for deer on this path of all places. Stalkers used the path daily, fishers and sightseers frequented it. I recalled the silence of the Twelfth and what Duncan let slip about famished bands of stragglers roving the country. I thought of Terry with sudden panic. I began to run as fast as my legs would carry me, down the path, out of the wood, into the meadows of Inverpattock. The normal past is still the background to my thoughts. Perhaps there are no stalkers now, no fishers by the Pattock, no sightseers save the sightless wide-eyed dead.