occurred to Mr. Byles, and he suggested that they should now have their lunch and feed the birds with the fragments. He was wondering also whether it would be wrong to snare one of the birds in the net, just to hold it in the hand and let it go again. [Illustration: "THEY WERE SO FRIENDLY THAT THEY GATHERED ROUND THE PARTY."] When things had come to this pass--and he never had expected anything so good--Speug withdrew unobtrusively behind a clump of trees, and then ran swiftly to a hollow where Nestie was waiting with the juniors. "Noo, my wee men," said Peter to the innocents, "div ye see that path? Cut along it as hard as ye can leg, and it 'ill bring you to the Muirtown Road, and never rest till ye be in your own houses. For Byles and these Dowbiggins are carryin' on sic a game wi' Lord Kilspindie's pheasants that I'm expectin' to see them in Muirtown jail before nicht. Ye may be thankful," concluded Peter piously, "that I savit ye from sic company." "Nestie," Peter continued, when the boys had disappeared, "I've never clypit (told tales) once since I cam to the Seminary, and it's no' a nice job, but div ye no' think that the head keeper should know that poachers are in the preserves?" "It's a d-duty, Peter," as they ran to the keeper's house, "especially when there's a g-gang of them and such b-bad-looking fellows--v-vice just written on their faces. It's horried to see boys so young and so w-wicked." "What young prodigals are yon comin' skelpin' along, as if the dogs were aifter them?" and the head keeper came out from the kennels. "Oh, it's you, Speug--and what are you doin' in the woods the day? there's no eggs now." For sporting people are a confederacy, and there was not a coachman or groom, or keeper or ratcatcher, within twelve miles of Muirtown, who did not know Mr. McGuffie senior, and not many who did not also have the acquaintance of his hopeful son. "Nestie and me were just out for a run to keep our wind richt, an' we cam on a man and three boys among the pheasants in the low park." "Among the what? Meddlin' with Lord Kilspindie's birds?" "Well, I dinna ken if they were juist poachin', but they were feedin' them, and we saw a net." "Sandie," shouted the head keeper, "and you, Tom, get up out of yir beds this meenut; the poachers are after the pheasants. My word, takin' them alive, as I'm a livin' man, to sell them for stock: and broad daylight; it beats everything. He 'ill be an old hand, frae Dundee maist likely. And the impidence o't, eleven o'clock in the forenoon an' the end o' September. Dod: it's a depairture in poachin'." And as the sight of Mr. Byles burst on his view, surrounded by trustful birds, and the two Dowbiggins trying very feebly to drop the net on a specially venturesome one, the head keeper almost lost the power of speech.