The cottage of the keeper, old Sandy, a veteran sportsman, silver-haired and wrinkled, who had often carried the general's game-bag when they were both 'school laddies,' was a busy scene that morning. It was a thatched edifice, garlanded round with dead wild-cats, weasels, foumarts, hawks, and 'other vermin,' which in their decay tainted the winter air, and its occupant was old enough to remember when the system of shooting with muzzle-loaders was very different from what it is to-day; when a cover was beaten with a precision quite military, and when the order 'Halt! reload!' went down the line, every man, be he shooter or beater, had to stop where he was, until the last barrel had been charged anew; and the old man had a supreme contempt for the perilous style of blazing away that had come in with arms of precision and the slaughter of battues. All the dogs around him seemed to know instinctively that they were about to take the field, and kept up a chorus of mingled whining and barking; and all the beaters were there, somewhat motley in aspect and appearance, but all doffing their bonnets respectfully, as Sir Piers came up with his 'guns' from the manor-house; and each of the latter underwent, unknown to himself, a critical scrutiny under the keen eyes of these practised fellows--his dress, his gun, his gaiters, his shot-belt, every buckle and strap being duly noticed and commented on. We may hope that Cecil Falconer's bearing and equipment carried him through this unknown ordeal; but the old keeper, who had an instinctive dislike of Hew Montgomerie, whispered to him as a stranger, though Sandy was, in Scottish parlance, a _dour carl_: 'Gie him a wide berth in the cover, sir! Shooting? _he_ might as well be ballooning!' Sandy knew some of Hew's vagaries when at cover, such as shooting down the line of the beaters and his companions, letting fly at a bird whose flight was no higher than a man's head, fingering his trigger, heedless of whether the muzzle was pointed to the sky or the earth, and as careless of his friends as if they were clad in Milan mail; for he was one of those awkward fellows who had not even the simple prudence which Charles Dickens ascribes to the obese Mr. Tracy Tupman, when that personage discovered that his chief object was to fire his gun without danger to his friends, himself, or the dogs. The covers of Eaglescraig were of considerable extent, and were well preserved and carefully looked after; and though Sir Piers, as he said, thought it very slow work compared with pig-sticking in six-foot-high jungle-grass, or potting a man-eater from a howdah, it was what suited him now, and in less than five minutes he had all his 'guns' in 'order of battle,' marshalled apart in a line of about a hundred and forty yards or so, the beaters being chequered in the gaps between the sportsmen.