'After eight years' soldiering with the Black Watch, do you actually retain the superstition that the plover is a type of inconstancy, and the bird of ill-omen Burns, Scott, and Leyden describe it as being?' Allan laughed, too; but now, when among his native mountains and the scenes of his childhood, he could not help old Scottish impressions returning to him, though certainly the ranks of his regiment were the last place in which he was likely to forget them. The silver-haired and silver-bearded old game-keeper, Dugald Glas (whose real name was Mackinnon), a hawk-eyed Celt, with a weather-beaten visage, and bare knees that were brown as mahogany, now urged silence and no more smoking. He had discovered by the aid of his binoculars a couple of deer grazing, but pretty far apart, upon the hill-side; and once again by private signal the two parties began mutually their stealthy approach upward in the two corries that concealed them in the _forest_, for so it was called, though destitute now of trees. 'A forest, as the word was strictly taken in ancient times,' says Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, 'could not be in the hands of anyone but the king, yet in later periods forests have become the property of subjects, or have been erected by them, though without being protected by forest laws. The royal forest in the Isle of Wight, in which there is not a single tree, is not the only English example remaining of the view taken of this old meaning of the word.' Hence, he adds, 'Let not the Cockney suppose that the word forest necessarily implies a district covered with oaks, chestnuts, or trees of any other description.' A powerful and gigantic staghound, wiry, sinewy, and iron-grey--the noble dog that Landseer loved to depict--saw the deer already without the aid of glasses and strained hard upon his leash, an iron chain, which was twisted round the muscular wrist of the old keeper, who soothed and patted him, while muttering in Gaelic, '_Mar e Bran, is e braithair!_' (If it is not Bran, it is his brother), alluding to Fingal's favourite staghound, which he was thought to resemble, as his hair was iron-grey, his feet were yellow, with erect ears of a ruddy tinge. The forenoon was brilliantly clear, so the deer-stalkers had not the weather to contend with, as that, if untoward, may render all strategy vain.