All these are splendid schemes--but what say you, Hamish, to one less ambitious, and better adapted to Old Kit? Let us beat all the best bits down by Armaddy--the Forge--Gleno, and Inveraw. We may do that well in some six or seven hours--and then let us try that famous salmon-cast nearest the mansion--(you have the rods?)--and if time permit, an hour's trolling in Loch Awe, below the Pass of the Brander, for one of those giants that have immortalised the names of a Maule, a Goldie, and a Wilson. Mercy on us, Shelty, what a beard! You cannot have been shaved since Whitsunday--and never saw we such lengthy love-locks as those dangling at your heels. But let us mount, old Surefoot--mulish in nought but an inveterate aversion to all stumbling. And now for the heather! But are you sure, gents, _that we are on_? And has it come to this! Where is the grandson of the desert-born? Thirty years ago, and thou Filho da Puta wert a flyer! A fencer beyond compare! Dost thou remember how, for a cool five hundred, thou clearedst yon canal in a style that rivalled that of the red-deer across the chasms of Cairngorm? All we had to do was to hold hard and not ride over the hounds, when running breast-high on the rear of Reynard the savage pack wakened the welkin with the tumultuous hubbub of their death-cry, and whipper-in and huntsman were flogging on their faltering flight in vain through fields and forests flying behind thy heels that glanced and glittered in the frosty sunshine. What steed like thee in all Britain at a steeple-chase? Thy hoofs scorned the strong stubble, and skimmed the deep fallows, in which all other horses--heavy there as dragoons--seemed fetlock-bound, or laboured on in staggerings, soil-sunk to the knees. Ditches dwindled beneath thy bounds, and rivulets were as rills; or if in flood they rudely overran their banks, into the spate plunged thy sixteen hands and a-half height, like a Polar monster leaping from an iceberg into the sea, and then lifting up thy small head and fine neck and high shoulder, like a Draco from the weltering waters, with a few proud pawings to which the recovered greensward rang, thy whole bold, bright-brown bulk reappeared on the bank, crested by old Christopher, and after one short snorting pause, over the miry meadows--tantivy!--tantivy!--away! away! away! Oh! son of a Rep! were not those glorious days? But Time has laid his finger on us both, Filho; and never more must we two be seen by the edge of the cover, "When first the hunter's startling horn is heard Upon the golden hills."