"He may have gone up to London," Mr. Meredyth put in, in a casual kind of fashion. "Didn’t you say he is studying for the Bar? Then he must go up from time to time to keep his terms and eat his dinners." "No, no—not just now," Fred Stanley interposed, and he spoke as one having authority, for he was himself looking forward to being called. "There’s nothing of that sort going on at this time of year: the next term is Michaelmas—in November. My dear Frank, do you imagine that that fellow Ross would go away from Lochgarra at the beginning of August?—why, it’s the very cream of the shooting!—a few days in advance of the legal time—the very pick of the year!—especially if you have a convenient little arrangement with a game-dealer in Inverness." Then he corrected himself. "No, I don’t suppose he carries on this kind of thing for money; I will do him that justice; he doesn’t look that kind of a chap. More likely malice: revenge for my uncle having come in and robbed him of what he had been brought up to consider his own: perhaps, too, the natural instinct of the chase, which is strong in some people, even when the law frowns on them." "I will confess this," Frank Meredyth struck in (for he noticed that Mary was looking deeply vexed, and yet was too proud to speak), "that if I had been born the son of a horny-handed peasant—or more particularly still, the son of the village publican—I should have been an inveterate poacher. I can’t imagine anything more exciting and interesting; the skill and cunning you have to exercise; the spice of danger that comes in; the local fame you acquire, when late hours and deep draughts lead to a little bragging. A poacher?—of course I should have been a poacher!—it is the only thing for one who has the instincts of a gentleman, and no money. And in the case of that young Ross, what could be more natural, with all the people round about recognising that that is the inalienable part of your inheritance? The land may have gone, and crops, and sheep, and what not: but the wild animals—the game—the birds of the air—the salmon in the stream—they still belong to the old family—they were never sold." "I beg your pardon—they were sold," said Fred Stanley, bluntly, "and whoever takes them in defiance of the law, steals: that’s all about it."