"No, I'm afraid it can't be managed this time, Robin," said Dolly. "But I am coming with you later in the week, if you'll take me." Robin said nothing. Now Dolly, I knew, did not approve of the inclusion of females in the business part of a day's shooting; and she regarded Miss Buncle and her twenty-eight bore with pious horror. The fact that she had consented to come and hold Dermott's second gun to-morrow seemed to indicate that that gallant sportsman had accomplished a feat which had already proved too much for several highly deserving young men--I was not quite sure that Robin was not one of them; and there seemed to be every reason to anticipate (especially since he was due to start for Aldershot to-morrow night) that when the Captain returned from the chase to-morrow afternoon, his bag would include one head of game of an interesting and unusual variety. III. At ten o'clock next morning we met the keepers, dogs, and beaters not far from the first line of butts on the moor. There was a hot sun, and the bees were bumbling in the heather. Somehow Whitehall seemed a long way off. The number of guns had been brought up to seven by the inclusion of a neighbouring laird--one Gilmerton of Nethercraigs--and his son. "All the same, we are still a man short," complained the Admiral, to whom a house-party was a ship's company, and a day's shooting a sort of terrestrial naval manoeuvre. "However, we will cut out the end butt in each drive and put a stop there to turn the birds farther in. Now we'll draw for places. Each man to take the butt whose number he draws, counting from the right and moving up one place after each drive. And Heaven help the man who draws number four now, for it means number seven and a climb up The Pimple for him directly after lunch!" There was a general laugh at this, which swelled to an unseemly roar when I drew the fatal number. However, after lunch was a long way off, and I trotted contentedly to number four and settled down to a pipe, while the head-keeper led off his mixed multitude of assistants, dogs, boys, and red flags to make a _detour_ and work the game up towards us. The first drive was simple. We were in a long and rather shallow glen, across which ran a low ridge, dividing it into two almost equal sections. The butts were placed along this ridge; and after the birds had been sent over us the beaters would work round to the other end of the glen and drive them back again. The shooting would be easy, for the ground lay flat and open in either direction. I found myself between Standish and Gerald; the former on my right, and the latter, together with the young keeper to whom his shooting education had been entrusted, in the butt on my left. Beyond Standish was Dermott, the crack shot of the party, and beyond Dermott, in number one butt, was the Admiral. The Gilmertons, _pere et fils_, occupied the butts on the extreme left.