His name I have forgotten, but we may call him Dick
Lindsay. It is told of him that he once found a poacher in the forest,
and, being unable to catch the intruder, fired his rifle, not at him, but
in his neighbourhood, whereon the poacher, deliberately kneeling down,
took a long shot at Dick. How the duel ended, and whether either party
flew a flag of truce, history does not record.
At all events, one stormy day in late September, Dick had stalked and
wounded a stag on the hills to the south-east of the strath. Here, if
only one were a novelist, one could weave several pages of valuable copy
out of the stalk. The stag made for the strath here, and Dick, who had
no gillie, but was an independent sportsman of the old school, pursued on
foot. Plunging down the low, birch-clad hills, the stag found the
flooded river before him, black and swollen with rain. He took the
water, crossing by the big pool, which looked almost like a little loch,
tempestuous under a north wind blowing up stream, and covered with small
white, vicious crests. The stag crossed and staggered up the bank, where
he stood panting. It is not a humane thing to leave a deer to die slowly
of a rifle bullet, and Dick, reaching the pool, hesitated not, but threw
off his clothes, took his skene between his teeth, plunged in, and swam
the river.
All naked as he was he cut the stag's throat in the usual manner, and
gralloched him with all the skill of Bucklaw.
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