So there was another crawling performance down from this exposed height; and eventually the small party managed to hide themselves in a black and moist peat-hag, where their extremely frugal repast was produced. "But look here, Roderick," Lionel said, "it's only twelve o'clock now; do you mean to say we have to stop in this wet hole till two or three in the afternoon?" "Ay, chist that," the keeper said, coolly. "They will begin to feed about three; and until they go over the ridge, it is no use at all trying to get near them." "And what are we to do all the time?" "Chist wait," Roderick said, with much simplicity; and then he and the gillie withdrew a little way down the peat-hag, so that they might have their luncheon and a cautious whispering in Gaelic by themselves. It was tantalizing in the last degree. The breathless consciousness that the deer were close by made him all the more impatient for the half-dreaded opportunity of having a shot at one of them. He wished it was well over. If he were going to miss, he wanted to have his agony of mortification encountered and done with, instead of enduring this maddening delay. The peat-hag became a prison; and a very uncomfortable prison, too. His sandwiches were soon disposed of; thereafter--what? He dared not smoke; he had no book with him; the keeper and the gillie, having withdrawn themselves, were exchanging confidences in their native tongue. His clothes were wet and cold and clammy; Percy Lestrange's flask appeared to afford him no comfort whatever. And of course the longer he brooded over the chances of hit or miss, the more appalling became the responsibility. How much depended on that fifteenth part of a second! He was half inclined to say, "Here, Roderick, I can bear this anxiety no longer. Let us get as near the deer as we can; sight the rifle for a long distance, you whistle the stags on to their legs--and I'll blaze into the thick of them. Anything to get the shot over and done with!"