The Master of Aberfeldie, Volume 1 (of 3)

'What does it matter what she thinks?' interrupted the elder man, laughing. 'When two persons are to spend the whole term of their natural lives together, they can surely spare a few days for pleasure apart!'

'But consider, I have not seen my little fiancée for seven years.'

'You will find her a pretty tall fiancée now,' replied the other, 'and as handsome as any girl in Scotland, Allan.'

The speakers were Lord Aberfeldie (he was viscount in the Peerage) and his son Allan, the Master, then at home on leave from the Black Watch, in which he was a captain; and now, side by side, they were creeping up a steep and stony corrie in search of the red deer, but paused for a few minutes to breathe and converse.

The Master--so entitled as the son of a Scottish baron (we may add for the information of most English readers even in these days)--was, like his father, a tall and soldier-like fellow, with closely-shorn dark brown hair, straight features, and an almost black moustache, which partly concealed lips that were handsomely curved, and expressive of no small degree of firmness and decision. He carried his head erect, and spoke rather with the air of one used to command when addressing men, but with great and subtle softness when conversing with women of every station and degree; and already, under home influences, his dark hazel eyes were losing the keen and somewhat hawk-like expression they had worn when daily facing death and suffering on active service.

Both father and son were handsome, though there were nearly thirty years between them in age, and both were, from head to foot, unmistakably thorough-bred men--the latter tanned deeply by a tropical sun, and his forehead scarred by a wound from a tulwar blade.

Lord Aberfeldie, now above fifty, had taken a turn of service for a few years in the Black Watch till his succession to the title required his presence at home, though an enthusiastic soldier; and soon after his place in the regiment which he loved so well was taken by his only son and heir, the Master, then fresh from college.

Father and son both wore plain shooting-kilts and jackets of coarse heather-coloured stuff, with handsomely-mounted sporans and skeins; other ornaments they had none, unless we except the crest of Graham--their surname--an eagle taloning a stork, in their glengarries; and the peer, who was a keen fisherman, had his head-dress further garnished by various flies and old fish-hooks.

When en route home to the family seat at Dundargue, in the Carse of Gowrie, the Master had been tempted by his father to join him at their shooting-box among the lovely Perthshire hills, where, at present, the party consisted of only four--Mr. Hawke Holcroft, an English guest, and Evan Cameron, a sub. of the Black Watch, also on leave; and these two, attended by a keeper and gillies, were creeping up another corrie, rifle in hand, about half a mile distant.

'You have had this--a--Mr. Holcroft with you for some time at Dundargue!' said Allan Graham, questioningly.

'Yes--for some weeks--before we came up to the hills here.'

'He cannot know anything about the implied engagement--that of Olive Raymond with me?'

'Implied?'

'Well--the peculiar arrangements that exist under her father's eccentric will.'

'Probably not--nay, undoubtedly not,' replied his father, eyeing him keenly; 'it is no business of his--so, whence the question, Allan?'

'Because he showed me, rather vauntingly, a very fine photo he keeps in his pocket-book.'

'A photo of Olive?'

'Yes.'

'The deuce he does. I have thought her sometimes too épris with our horsey friend Hawke Holcroft, and thus longed for your return. They renewed at Dundargue, an acquaintance formed last season in London, when Olive made some sensation, I assure you; and, now that you have seen her photo, what do you think of her--pretty?'

'Pretty! She is downright beautiful!'

'Ah--wait till you have seen her. She does credit to your mother's rearing and her governess's tutelage; but you have not exhibited much impatience hitherto. Gad, when I was your age----'

'You forget that she was such a child when we parted,' interrupted Allan, stroking out his long dark moustache. 'But was it not rather cool of him to show me her likeness?'

'Perhaps; but then it was done in ignorance of the situation, and it is probably the result of some conservatory flirtation.'

'But just as he showed it to me, was it not strange that I heard the cry of a plover overhead, and----'

Lord Aberfeldie interrupted his son by a hearty laugh, and tossed away the end of his cigar.

'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.

Lord Aberfeldie and his son were as well aware as their skilled old keeper that in stalking the chief things to regard are the eyes and nose of the deer. His vision, quick as that of an eagle, can detect a human head above a ridge of rock or belt of bracken, and he can scent an intruder on his 'native heath,' if the breeze blows from the former, at a wonderful distance; and old Dugald Glas, who had brought the father and son to the forest at dawn with us much care and secresy as if an assassination was in hand, had long scanned the vicinity with his glasses before he discovered the stags in question, and gave the concealed stalkers the signal to approach them.

The two animals were rather far apart; both were quietly feeding, and--as the season was considerably advanced--both in colour were marvellously like the grey stone and brown heather around them, and both were, as yet, all unalarmed as Lord Aberfeldie, the Master, and Dugald Glas, while pausing and holding ever and anon a council of war in low whispers, crept up the stony corrie, keeping carefully to leeward of the quarry they had selected, leaving Cameron of Stratherroch and Hawke Holcroft to approach the other as best they might; but it was in the present instance absolutely necessary that both parties should fire at the same instant, or one of the stags would vanish at a gallop, perhaps to the most distant limit of the forest.

In crawling after such game the head must be foremost when going up a hill, and the feet foremost when going down, and the stalker must creep on his stomach and knees; and all this, when done in the kilt, over rough rocks, sharply-pointed heather, and mossy bog, is not to be effected without considerable toil and even discomfort.

Nearly an hour of this kind of work had gone on, the father and son creeping side by side, softly and in silence, dragging their rifles after them, old Dugald following in the same fashion, with Bran straining on his iron chain; and once or twice they had actually to traverse the bed of a mountain burn that brawled hoarsely downward over its brown-worn pebbles and boulders.

The stag was still feeding quietly, and all unconscious of the approach of death; and the stalkers were, they thought, within a safe distance now, and that it could not escape them; so Dugald Glas dropped behind, after whispering to the Master in Gaelic,

'Blood upon the skein, Allan!'

Then the heart of the latter began to beat highly as the moment for shooting drew near, for after all their care and toil it was quite possible that a grouse might whirr up from the heather, and with a warning cry scare the stag to full speed.

'You take aim, Allan,' whispered Lord Aberfeldie, 'and I shall reserve my fire. It is years since you had a shot at a dun cow, my boy.'

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.