Inch by inch the Master cautiously inserted his double-barrelled rifle between the stiff tufts of purple heather that fringed the bank of the hollow up which they had been creeping, and brought the sights to bear upon the beautiful and graceful animal that cropped the herbage, with his branching antlers lowered; and Allan, in the excitement of the moment, felt his pulses beating wildly. 'If I miss--if I fail!' he muttered. 'Tut---there is no such word as fail!' replied his father, unconsciously quoting 'Richelieu.' Allan drew a long breath, while his dark eye seemed to flash along the barrel, and fired. Bang went a couple of rifles in the distant corrie, but Aberfeldie and his son took no heed of them. The latter's single shot had sped true, piercing the stag above the left eye, and now it lay prone on the heather, tearing up tufts and sandy earth with its hoofs in the agonies of death. Allan's skein-dhu was promptly in his hand; the stag was _gralloched_, and Dugald Glas, waving his bonnet, shouted loudly for Alister Bane and Hector Crubach (or lame Hector), two gillies, to bring up the pony, on which the dead animal was slung, and then the party set out for the place appointed for luncheon, as raid-day was now long since past. 'What the deuce are Stratherroch and Holcroft about?' exclaimed Lord Aberfeldie, while shading his eyes with his hand; and to their success in sport we shall refer in the next chapter. CHAPTER II. HAWKE HOLCROFT. The process of creeping in serpent fashion over sharp-pointed heather, rough stones, and occasionally in the bed of a mountain stream, as we have already described, proved intensely tiresome and distasteful to a 'man about town' like Mr. Hawke Holcroft, who could not entirely conceal his genuine disgust thereat, and at the slowness of the whole affair, though reminded by Dugald's son Angus, a smart young under-keeper, of the big hart of Benmore, which was stalked for seven long summer days before it was killed. 'But, for the Lord's sake, sir, keep quiet,' whispered Angus. 'We are now close on one of the finest of Macgilony's dun cows.' 'I see no dun cow!' grumbled Holcroft. 'He means yonder deer,' whispered Cameron, a fair-haired and pleasant-looking fellow. 'Macgilony was a famous hunter in the olden time, and his dun cows, as he called them, were the red deer of the Grampians.' But to Holcroft, whose idea of hunting the stag was to have a scared and bewildered creature--a fallow deer, fed on oats and hay, perhaps--cast loose from a game-cart in a smooth, grassy park, the perseverance, courage, and labour required for stalking in the Highlands seemed a simple waste of time and an inconceivable bore. 'Stop for a minute,' whispered Angus, as they crept _up the wind_; 'the stag can smell with more than its nostrils.'