I’ve been looking at the Internet Archive’s collection of issues of Blackwood’s Magazine, indexing them for the FictionMags Index. This job has been slowed considerably by discovering just how readable these magazines are. I’m not even just considering the amount of fiction they contained, but I’ve been reading fascinating, solid news articles about issues of the day, from 140 years ago.

The fiction in these magazines came from some of the biggest authors of the day, but the editorial policy of Blackwood’s was that all content was anonymous, with the exception of poetry. This, they said, not only allowed unknown authors of genius to shine, but also meant that well-known authors couldn’t submit poor material: everything had to pass on merit.

One of the short stories that struck my eye the other day was called The Factor’s Shooting. I couldn’t make head or tail of the title, but it became clear as I read on that a ‘factor’ is a Scottish term for the manager of an estate. The author was Gilfred W. Hartley, who was a hunter, climber and fisherman. I can picture him taking a break from stalking to sit in the heather and scribble the first draft of this story, which I much enjoyed.

The Factor’s Shooting

I am a factor. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say I was a factor, for at the present time I am without occupation. One day, two or three years ago, I set myself down to inquire carefully into my affairs. The problem to be solved was not a difficult one: Given a small capital on which it is impossible to live—granted a certain yearly deduction from it to pay bills with,—how long will it be before the capital vanishes away altogether? I found that this period would occur in about seven years, and the next day I announced to my friends that I was going to look out for “something to do.” I had had what is called a first-rate education: a long course of expensive schools and tutors had ended in Oxford, though I left that university without taking a degree. I could read and write and do easy sums; by the help of a “Liddell and Scott” and a grammar I could construe all but the hardest passages in Homer and Thucydides; and by making copious use of convenient spondee adjectives, I was capable of turning out immense quantities of correctly scanning Latin verse. My friends all said, “There will be no difficulty in a fellow like you getting a good berth,” and at first I shared their confidence. But as time wore on my hopes died away. To begin with, I considered myself debarred from certain kinds of work. Having been accustomed to country life, to freedom from noise and dirt and confinement, I determined that whatever happened I would have nothing to do with anything which would necessitate always living in a town. I had been ploughed for mathematics in “Smalls” and “Mods;” and all the hazy notions about papering rooms, or dividing apples and oranges in certain proportions amongst a given number of children, which once possessed my brain, had long ago deserted it, and I felt myself unequal both in inclination and capability to grapple with accounts. I had, of course, no money to invest in business, and pride prevented me from thinking of anything absolutely menial. As I look back, I sometimes wonder what kind of employment it was I did expect to meet with; but indeed, after a time, I ceased to have any expectations at all. My heart grew sick with waiting; small mean pecuniary troubles hemmed me in on every side—ever increasing in inverse ratio to my capital; anxious days followed on weary nights, and there were hopeless waitings for “something” to come by the post. Then my friends began to change their tone. They said, “You really ought to make an effort—we are afraid your education has been but a poor preparation for your future life.” I never could see that they took much trouble in looking out for “things” for me, or indeed did anything but give advice; but perhaps they worked in secret, and were ashamed of their good deeds seeing the light.

Whether this was so or not, there was no visible result, and matters were at their worst when I received an offer from an old Manchester merchant to take charge of a small property he owned in Scotland. I met this old gentleman on a railway journey, did him some small service in looking after his lost luggage, and afterwards in a moment of confidence told him of some of my difficulties. Then he mentioned his want of a factor, and asked for references as to my character and capabilities. I gave him the names of two old friends; and the answers they sent to his inquiries perplexed him so much, that he showed them to me and asked me what they meant. When I read the letters, I was not surprised at the old gentleman’s bewilderment—I could not understand them myself,—that is, I could not make out the meaning of the sentences, but I knew well enough why they were so mysteriously worded. It was evident that my friends, whilst unwilling to say anything definite against me, were determined to take no responsibility upon themselves; and they had succeeded so well that I would defy any lawyer or expert to attach any responsibility to them, or make out what they really meant. They told me afterwards (not knowing I had seen the correspondence) that they had given me an exceedingly good character; and I thought it best to affect ignorance and thank them, for I did not know how long it might be before I should again require their good offices—such as they were. Whether Mr. Weatherby (that was the merchant’s name) was deceived, or whether for some reason or other he really took a fancy to me, I don’t know—he gave me the offer of the place.

I had the vaguest ideas of the duties of a factor: as I look back, I must confess I was singularly ignorant of almost everything which belonged to such a post. Though I had spent much of my life in the country, I had done so to little purpose. I could shoot a little, and was an enthusiastic follower of all kinds of sport. But though health, pleasure, and in some desolate countries profit, is to be got by means of the gun, I could not help feeling that a practical knowledge of its use is not an indispensable qualification to a factor even in Scotland; and, considering the matter carefully over, it seemed my only one. I learnt, by-and-by, that it was part of the duty of a factor to look after woods. I could distinguish, as well as any man, the difference between a larch tree and a beech, or even between a larch and a Scotch fir. But a silver fir and a spruce seemed to me perfectly alike; and it was after carrying about little sprays of the two kinds with private marks of identity on them for a long time, and playing a kind of guessing game with them, that I was able to rightly name the one from the other. As to being able to distinguish between the timber of these trees when sawn up, I never could, and never shall, be able to do it. Some kinds of wood are to be told from other kinds by a smell of resin; but a Scotch factor cannot well go about smelling planks; and indeed it is not so easy to do naturally as one would think. I was aware that an agent should be more or less intimate with everything connected with land, on it or under it—subsoil, and crops, and cattle, and ploughs, and dairymaids, and pigeons; and I knew about none of these things. Like a distinguished northern politician, I thought all cattle “rather slack about the shoulder;” one plough was as another plough; one dairymaid seemed to me like other dairymaids, except that some were prettier.

I accepted the offer at once. In spite of this long list of negative qualifications, I never hesitated for a moment, I could not bear to face the reproaches of my friends at throwing away a chance. I trusted to practice, to books, to luck, to everything but myself. I remembered that a hundred years hence anything I might do would have been forgotten. I was sorry for Mr. Weatherby, but I closed rabidly and at once with his offer. As I have said, probably some prejudice in my favour, or some small compassion for my position, weighed with the latter. Being a townsman himself, he fancied that all country folk understood all about country matters; and he knew, of course, he could easily get rid of me if I turned out an unsatisfactory character.

I felt very grateful to the old man. He was in many ways difficult to deal with; and yet, on the whole, I did not get on badly with him; and I may say at once, though I have left his service, I did not do so on account of any proved incapacity on my part for the work. My great safeguard lay in this fact, that he was infinitely more ignorant than I was. If all matters appertaining to land were Greek to me, they were Chinese or Sanskrit to him. He called himself a cloth manufacturer; but I believe his principal business consisted in making bags for artificial manure, though he knew nothing whatever about the various ingredients which filled them. I have seen him carefully examine a pile standing at a station waiting to be trucked; he used to pat them complacently, and search, I thought, for some mark to identify them by. In his middle age he had rented a small bit of rabbit-shooting near Manchester. A year or two before I met him he had bought a small property in a large Scotch county, and he considered himself somewhat of an authority on sport. He may have known something about rabbits, but he was certainly singularly ignorant of all matters connected with grouse. When he got a point he always started off as hard as he could to it—either by the noise he made putting up the birds, or else arriving in such a state of breathlessness that he could do nothing with the easiest chance. If he wounded a hare (and he seldom killed one outright) he used to loo his old setter after it; and nothing pleased him more than a successfully conducted chase of this kind, for, as he said, the process combined the pleasure of shooting with the excitement of a course. And one day on getting a snipe he sent it off immediately to M‘Leay’s at Inverness to be stuffed. This old man was easily satisfied: two or three head per diem to his own gun contented him, and half-a-dozen made him triumphant; but when, as sometimes happened, he got nothing at all, he became despondent, and made me a kind of scapegoat to vent his disgust on. One day he took me out with him to the moor, and was at first much exercised to find that in shooting, at any rate, I was his superior: indeed, I feared he would not ask me again. But our united bag was naturally heavier than his single one. He always immediately claimed every bird which came down from a brood at which we had both fired, and I never disputed his right to do so—it was not for me as a Scotch factor to argue with my employer. When Mr. Weatherby found out this, he never went on the hill without me.

The property was not large considering it was in the Highlands. There was a big house, some 1500 acres of moor and wood, and two or three small arable farms lying between the latter and the great loch which formed the march on one side. I entered on my duties with fear and trembling; but as time wore on I became used to the position, acquired a certain amount of confidence in myself, and, on the whole, managed to get on pretty well. It is true I made some terrible mistakes—mistakes which caused me to feel uncomfortable then, but which make me blush now when I think of them sometimes in bed. I spoke to one of the tenants about putting a bandage on the fetlock of a cow; I very nearly bought some oats from another at 70s. a quarter; and I drove almost into frenzy the old man who acted as my lieutenant on the place by proposing to get the surplus water off some lea by drains seven feet deep and ten feet apart. As a rule, I got out of these holes of error. The blank astonishment in the worthy farmer’s face, when I offered him for his corn, told me I had made some mistake; and a search in Stephen’s ‘Book of the Farm,’ made it plain that such drainage as I contemplated would be equally bad for the land and the proprietor. Still now and then I went too far, and Mr. Weatherby suffered. He was, however, so ignorant himself, that I always managed without falsifying anything, or without falsifying to any great extent, to persuade him that all was right—that matters were as they ought to be.

In a measure, I soon got rather to like Mr. Weatherby. He had a sister who kept house for him, and I never could endure her. She was a vulgar, conceited woman, fond of snubbing me whenever she got a chance, and too apt, I thought, to treat me as a servant. Of course I was a servant in a way; but I knew that both by birth and education I was her superior. She could not keep her h’s in their proper places, much less make Latin verses; and I thought she might have shown me a little more consideration. I could not afford to quarrel with her openly, and I tried with all my might to affect to misunderstand her sometimes offensive insinuations. She made me go stupid messages which the servants could just as well have carried; and she even tried once to impress on her brother that it was part of my duty to get up and ring the big bell which was supposed to rouse the household—but he stood my friend in this matter, and though, as a rule, pretty much under the influence of his sister, peremptorily vetoed her suggestion.

I took up my abode in Scotland in January; in August the owner and his family arrived; and about the end of September he announced to me that he should be obliged to cut his stay shorter than he had intended and go South immediately.

“Stoney,” (that is my name) he said one morning, “business requires me to go to Manchester at once, and as it is late in the season, I shall hardly come back again this year. I should like you to send me a box of game about the middle of next month—five brace of grouse and two hares. You will find it perhaps difficult to get them without my aid, but you must do your best.” And then he added graciously, “You may shoot a grouse and a hare for yourself—a blue hare.” Those I had to send him were to be brown. From his cheerful countenance and measured language (when put out he always swore a good deal) I felt sure that the trade in manure-bags was looking up. Before he left he gave me many further directions as to the twelve head of game I was to send him. “And Stoney,” he said, “shoot as few hen birds as you can. I won’t have any hen birds killed; we can keep the cocks till they are tender.” “But,” I asked, “how am I to tell a cock from a hen when they are flying?” “You can distinguish them,” he replied, —“you can distinguish them—by—their woolly legs.” I knew that he knew as much about the sex of a grouse as about the moral character of a salmon, and I cheerfully promised. “And, Stoney,” he went on, “don’t disturb that stag. I won’t have that stag disturbed. If that old scoundrel who lives at” (making a fearful mess of the Gaelic name) “hunts that stag, I’ll turn him out of his farm.” “But he has a lease,” I ventured to interpose, “and there’s thirteen years of it to run, and you can’t turn him out.” Then Mr. Weatherby went off grunting into the house. The farmer was a peaceable old fellow, who had probably never used a gun in his life, and the “stag” was a roe which we had put up one day in going through a wood,

At last the day of departure arrived. I accompanied my employers across the loch to the little station, where they met the train which caught the night mail to the South. We had a big boat-load—servants, luggage, and Miss Weatherby,—herself no inconsiderable weight. As a last chance of making herself disagreeable, she ordered me, rather than asked me, to row. I think her heart softened a little just as the train was starting, for she put out her hand as if to say good-bye; but at that moment Lord Blackadder, the rich owner of a large deer-forest in the district, came out of the booking-office, and she hastily withdrew it, not wishing to appear on intimate terms with the factor before that nobleman. I could not help feeling rather triumphant when the great man shook hands with me (I had had an interview with him on some question of a disputed march), and spoke pleasantly to me. “You are going to be here for the winter, I suppose, Mr. Stoney. I don’t intend to kill any more stags this season; but there will be some hinds wanted about Christmas, and I have told Campbell, the head keeper, to let you know when they go after them.” I thought this very kind of Lord Blackadder, and thanked him. I saw Miss Weatherby hold half open the door of her carriage, I saw Lord Blackadder bow to her and get into another compartment further down, and as I watched the train twisting along the shore of the loch I rejoiced within me at the little snub.

When the train was out of sight I rowed home again. I well remember that row. The yellow and red and crimson beeches and larches which fringed the shores of the great loch were repeated in the water without their reflection being disturbed by a ripple. There was a haze in the distance, the sun shone brightly but with little power, and there was a pleasant smell of autumn and frost and dead leaves in the air. I looked with some pride and sense of proprietor-ship at the little territory over which I was to rule undisturbed for the next nine months. The stooks were still standing in the oat-fields close down by the loch: then there came the trimly squared pastures, each sheltered by its broad belt of wood; and above these the moor, brown now with its faded heather, stretched away for miles till it joined the distant haze. My eyes dwelt longest and with most affection on this moorland, for it was there dwelt the eleven grouse and three hares which I had been directed to slay.

I had made many good resolutions by the time I sculled the heavy old tub into the little landing-place,—that I would really work hard for Mr. Weatherby—harder than I had done before,—that I would make his interests my own,—that I would be courteous to cross old Maggie the housekeeper,—and finally, that I would not shoot more grouse than I had been ordered. Brimful of good intentions, I started directly I had moored the boat to the nearest farm to make an appointment for the next day with the tenant to measure some sheep drains we had been cutting on the hill. He was working amongst his corn: and as I went in at the top of the field I was greeted and startled by a loud whirring noise—a dozen grouse had been feeding on the stubble, and they flew back on to the moor, following carefully in their skimming flight every undulation of the ground. I went down to old Rory, the little farmer, and we chatted together for some time on diverse matters, but I made no appointment with him: I determined, though I made a feeble struggle in favour of the drains, to devote the next day to grouse. My conscience told me I was wrong in this. It is true, Mr. Weatherby had not told me not to go out the next day, but he had specified the time when he wanted the game,—a full fortnight hence. I made another attempt on the road home to conquer myself, and nearly turned back, after all, to speak to the farmer; but at that moment I was passing through the stooks, and I saw they were almost all within gunshot of the wall. Before going to bed that night, I in a measure salved my conscience by determining that the grouse I was to slay in the morning should be the grouse that rightly belonged to me, and no other; and having made this compact, I slept the sleep of the just. The morning was keen and bright; there was frost. The dahlias in front of the lodge were cut down by it, and the beds of heliotrope were withered and blackened. I knew that up on the moor the heather would be dry in an hour; and after having devoured hastily my oat-cake and bacon breakfast, I shouldered the gun and was off—feeling far more eager about this, my first attempt solus, than I had ever done when acting as bag-carrier and dog-beater to Mr. Weatherby. By ten I was far up on the moor: the men were working amongst the stooks, and there was nothing there. By eleven I had killed my grouse; the day was young—the best part of the ground was untouched—the brood to which my bird had belonged lay like stones,—and yet my work was over. I ought to have thrown all my cartridges into a peat-bog and run home as hard as I could. Alas! I threw away nothing but empty cases that day. The grouse all lay like stones that day; they lay too well. Everything favoured me—I found them easily—I knocked them over as I had never done before: double shots, snap-shots, long shots—it was all the same; down came a bunch of rich brown and black and russet feathers. I had no dog except a little skye terrier, and yet I never lost a bird. When I emptied out the contents of the bag at four o’clock, I was almost sick with fright at the display. Six and a half brace lay before me. I had killed on the very first day a brace more than the full allowance for the season for my employer and myself. Old cocks? Not they. I had never thought of the warning that had been given me—I had never looked for the woolly legs. Here was a pretty beginning,—a curious corollary to the resolutions scarcely twenty-four hours old. I had begun by intending to shoot one bird—my lawful bird; then I killed another in lieu of my lawful blue hare, and then I was very miserable; I felt no pleasure in looking at the bonnie dead birds.

I remembered how Christopher North had resuscitated the snipe by blowing down his neb, and longed for his power. What on earth was I to do with my spoil? I put a brace back into the game-bag, and the remainder I buried carefully in a moist peat-hag—eleven as fine grouse as ever man saw: plump, and in perfect plumage, and all with the woolly legs which my master considered the characteristic of a cock. Two pounds’ worth of grouse did I stick into that slimy hole, and hate myself for doing so; but no other course lay open to me. I dared not send them away, and Maggie would have betrayed me if I had taken them home. As I lay awake that night, I felt a great change had come over my moral character. Only a few hours had passed since I had been brimming over with virtuous self-complacency. A few hours had changed all. I was a poacher; I had betrayed the trust of my master. I was a coward for burying the birds in a bog—nay, I almost felt as if I was a liar; for I had half made up my mind, as I came down the hill, to account for my many shots by saying I had been firing at a mark. No one had questioned me. But then my uneasy conscience began to inquire whether the intention was not of as much value as the act; and while debating this nice point I fell asleep.

It would not be profitable in any sense to give a daily account of what I did on the moor between that day and the 10th of December. I was often on it. There was not very much work for me on the place, but to a certain extent I neglected what there was to do if I thought I should have any luck on the hill. I tried sometimes to resist the fascinations of the sport; but I think I must be a little weak-willed—at any rate in that particular direction—for I hardly ever did ultimately fight the temptation successfully. Perhaps I might have succeeded better if it had not been for those fatal stubble-fields. The grouse used to come down every afternoon and feed—confiding things!—within gunshot of the walls. About 3 p.m, they used to arrive—not many, for there were not many on the place, About 3.5 they used to fly off again—some of them; and some would be sprawling on the crisp stubble, or lying quiet in brown feathery masses. The end of this kind of thing was that I did serious injury to the shooting—I almost destroyed it. The marches were narrow, the grouse naturally few. They were exceedingly greedy birds; like myself, they gave way readily to temptation, and the penalty they paid for their sensuality was a heavy one. I consider, if the season had lasted ten days or a fortnight longer, that the Tetrao Scoticus would have become extinct so far as that moor was concerned. As it was, a few wary old cocks and one small brood alone escaped.

It will naturally be supposed that this kind of work could not be carried on altogether in secret. Wood-pigeons and crows might account for the firing, and I avoided the farm-folk as much as possible. If ever I enter the diplomatic service, the experience I gained in dealing with the people on this Scotch place will be invaluable to me. And I used to crouch, to lie down, to assimilate my shape to that of a tree, to pay particular attention to the colour of a background. The shepherd must have had a pretty good idea of what went on on the moor. But the shepherd hated Mr. Weatherby, who had called him a damned old woman one day, when certain holes in his little hut’s walls had been pointed out and complained of; and I used to give him tobacco and whisky sometimes, and let him help himself liberally to firewood. This man was solemn and reputedly devout; he had an acrid and severe countenance, and he was wifeless. This latter state greatly encouraged me to hope that he would be silent.

I harried the place shamefully, and what grouse were left had good cause to bless the sun which rose on the 11th of December. As for the “stag,” I met him one evening when coming home from the hill in the dusk, and fired two barrels of small-shot at him; and the poor beast was found a week after in the wood, dead and wasted.

So came Christmas; after which festive period, spent by me rather dismally in thinking of my sins, and wondering whether I should be found out, I got a companion at the lodge. I advertised in the ‘Field’ for a pupil; and though when I got an application I was almost frightened at my audacity, the man who made it came. Perhaps he was lured by the good fishing which formed a part of the advertisement. For a time I tried to make him do a little work. I set him down to the estate account-book one day, and persuaded him to make a copy of it, as an example of what such things should be; but he detected a mistake in my adding up in the second or third page, and after that I left him alone so far as money matters were concerned. We both fished a good deal in the loch, and in the small burn which ran through the property; and I should have had a pleasant spring, if it had not been for the fact that summer came next. As the months sped on, I became more and more alarmed. As a proof of how easy it is for a tolerably virtuous young man to become at short notice something distinctly the reverse, I may mention that at one time I seriously contemplated setting the heather on fire just before the season for muirburn ended—of course accidentally—and burning the whole of it; but I discovered in time that such an act is looked on by the law as a criminal offence, and is punished by a long term of imprisonment.

Before Christmas, Lord Blackadder’s keeper had come over to tell me of a hind-drive he was contemplating; and I went into the forest for a short visit, and had a pleasant time of it with the jovial gillies. We were on the hills all day, slept at night in a remote and lonely lodge, feasted on fresh venison-steaks, and scones, and whisky, and in the evening played “catch the ten” with indescribably dirty packs of cards, or “puss in the corner” with bonnie rosy-cheeked maidens. I never myself got any hinds, for they always seemed to come awkwardly to the places where I was posted; but I enjoyed the “puss in the corner” very much. I was, however, startled, when saying good-bye to the head-keeper, at a remark he made—“You’ll no’ be having many birds o’ your groun’ for the season?” “Oh, Campbell,” I said, “what makes you think that?” “Oh, it’s the weather,” he replied; “these black frosts is clean bad for the breeding.” This happened before Christmas, and I felt sure grouse would not be thinking of such a thing; but there was a queer look in his eye when he spoke which made me suspect, early as it was, that he had paid a visit to some black bottle; and I was sorry for this, as Campbell was reputed a steady man, and much respected by his master on that account. “Oh no,” he said again; “I’m afraid you’ll no’ make a very heavy bag on Rhian the year.”

Summer drew near. It was evident that I was not altogether hardened into crime, for by the end of July I could not sleep at night, and on the first day of August I took Robert (the pupil) into my confidence. He was a nice open lad. We had got on together very well, and he seemed thoroughly to appreciate the difficulties of my situation. He was quite willing to do anything he could to help; but for a long time I did not see how we could do anything, and I resolved to let matters take their course. Old Mr. Weatherby had been unwell during the summer, and at one time I thought my difficulties would be solved by his not being able to come North at all; but shortly before the Twelfth, he wrote saying he was much better, and intended finishing his cure in Scotland. He added he was much pleased to see by the papers that the grouse in our district were strong and plentiful. I wrote in a great hurry to say that this was not at all the case with us, and that the breeding season had been a very bad one (which was a perfectly true statement); but the letter had no effect in changing his resolution, and on the 10th he and his sister and household arrived.

It was with very different feelings that I once more acted as stroke in the family boat, and started for the station. On the way I firmly made up my mind to confess everything. I knew that the grouse all round us were plentiful; the oldest inhabitant could not remember a better nesting season. But I had acted as the French sportsman did who killed the hares “Desdemone” and “Alphonse,” and left only “le vieux Achille” to breed. I had depopulated the ground.

My employer was looking out of the train as it drew up: his face had lost its ruddiness, and altogether he was feebler than when I last saw him. He was very gracious, and seemed delighted to be once more in Scotland. The sight of his gun-cases and a new setter almost made me sick. There was no time then to explain matters, and long before we reached the landing-place I once more changed my mind. I could not explain things. Mr. Weatherby asked many questions about the grouse, and I gave blurred, indistinct answers to some, whilst others I pretended not to hear, and laboured most diligently at the oar. The lapse of another year had not improved the temper of his sister, and what little she did say was disagreeable.

Robert and I had moved out of the big house to a small cottage close by; and as we were sitting by the smouldering peat before going to bed that night, I made a proposition to him. There is a kind of sport to be witnessed amongst the fells of Cumberland which is hardly known in other counties. It consists in dragging a skin steeped in aniseed across country for ten or a dozen miles, for dogs to hunt. This is called a “hound-trail.” It takes place after wrestling-matches and pigeon-shootings and shows, and causes great delight to the sturdy sport-loving northern farmers. I told Robert of this, and asked him if he would be willing to go up on to the hill early in the morning of the Twelfth, and put such a skin down here and there; and I explained to him that the dogs would scent it, and work about as if after game, whilst, as Mr. Weatherby was short-sighted, we might be able to induce him to believe that the birds had run and got up farther on,—that if this was carried out two or three times, his disgust at their behaviour, and his weakness from his recent illness, might prevent him going out much more. Robert, after a little demur, agreed to perform his part; and the next morning, under the pretext of getting some remedy for toothache, I went to the little town and bought some of the strong-smelling drug.

It was not with much confidence that I embarked in this desperate course, but it was just possible that it might hoodwink Mr. Weatherby. I knew his extreme ignorance on all matters connected with game. I bethought me of how, the last season, he had perpetually fired at small birds in mistake for snipe; how he had taken a roe for a red deer, an old carrion-crow for a black-cock; how, when he had tumbled head over heels into a peat-hag, and plugged up both barrels with black earth, he had wished to clear them by firing his cartridges; and how he had only been saved from destruction by my interposition. I remembered all this, and determined that it was worth while to run the risk; I could not make things much worse than they were. I gave the shepherd a pair of old boots and half a pound of tobacco, prayed heartily for a stormy morrow, and went to bed in a most unenviable state of mind.

Uneasy snatches of sleep were all I was able to secure; and at a very early hour I awoke Robert, and started him off with his rabbit-skin and little bottle, giving him many and minute instructions as to what he was to do.

Ah! if my conscience had been easy, how glad I should have been at the look of that morning! It was one of those early autumn days which give promise of heat: a heavy dew lay over everything. Robert left broad footprints as he crossed the lawn, and destroyed myriads of gossamer and sparkling spider webs.

There was the usual delay in making a start, the usual collecting of cartridge-bags and flasks, and about ten Mr. Weatherby and myself and the shepherd stood at the gate which opened on to the first bit of moorland. The former was full of cheerful anticipations: my mind, though I acted my part as well as I could, was filled with most dismal forebodings. I experienced, in an intensified form, the feelings of a schoolboy who is called up for a lesson he has not prepared: perhaps the thoughts of a clerk submitting falsified accounts to his employer would be still nearer akin to mine. What the shepherd thought I do not know; his sour face was unreadable by me. I had tried to persuade the old merchant that he (the shepherd) would be an unnecessary encumbrance, and that I could easily carry all the game myself—how easily none but I knew; but Mr. Weatherby was obstinate. He insisted on our both taking enormous game-bags. I thought of the whisky, and tobacco, and firewood, and boots for which the shepherd was indebted to me, and fervently trusted that he did the same. I had expected Robert home before we started, but he had not made his appearance. The setters were let loose, and in three minutes they ran into a brace of grouse. My mind was so occupied and anxious that my fingers were unready, and I missed. Not so Mr. Weatherby. To the great surprise of the shepherd and myself and the dogs—certainly to his own—he knocked over a bird. He was jubilant: he laughed at my dismal forebodings; he chaffed me for my bad shooting; he brought out his flask and gave us both a small mouthful of whisky “to wet the luck;” he prophesied an enormous bag, and then he ordered an advance.

I knew those two old birds: I may almost say I knew them by sight, and probably they were as well “acquaint” with me. Many a time had I tried in the previous autumn to circumvent them, and only superior cunning on their part had saved them.

So we went deep into the moor: we waded through rich blooming heather; we passed by rushy patches, and green burns, and sunny hillocks, where grouse used to love to lie, and it was all as a city of the dead. Mr. Weatherby got hot and fidgety, and tired, and finally cross. He insisted on taking his own course, and would not be guided by my advice, and so we wandered a mile from the place where I had told Robert to cast off. The shepherd’s face told nothing—he acted as “Brer” Fox did in the American story, “he lay low.” I was wondering what on earth had become of Robert, and was picturing to myself that self-sacrificing individual stuck in a bog or drowning in a burn, when a loud To-ho! startled me. I saw Dash and Meg standing rigid about a hundred yards off, and Mr. Weatherby starting after them as hard as he could go. I was too much accustomed to this proceeding to be much surprised at it. In defiant opposition to all the rules of shooting, the old bag-merchant ran furiously towards his dogs. Whenever he had a little breath to spare he shouted loudly To-ho!—though to all appearance the setters never meant to move again. He reached them in his usual state of mind and body—blown, shaking, and done.

Nothing got up: the dogs refused to budge an inch. I encouraged them, and patted them, and pushed them, and then their master kicked them, but they would not move.

“He has been here and made the stuff too strong,” I thought, and I almost fancied I could smell it myself. Mr. Weatherby began to swear and hammer the dogs with his gun; and the shepherd—“he lay low.”

Suddenly the animals began to move—to draw; we stood round and watched them with much solemnity and anxiety: with slow and stately step and great rigidity of body they advanced, and we followed. Mr. Weatherby, with his forefinger on his right trigger; I with my hammers down, half expecting to see Robert jump up out of a bunch of heather and run for it; and the shepherd with his stick held like a gun, ready to use in a moment. The dogs went steadily on and on. “They’ve run,” said Mr. Weatherby in a hoarse and excited whisper; “head them, Stoney.” So I made a circuit and met the party, and, miserable as I was, could hardly keep from laughing aloud at the appearance it presented to one who was behind the scenes.

The funeral march of the dogs was gradually exchanged for a quicker step. They began at length to trot, to sniff in an excited manner here and there. Then they threw up their heads, they stretched their tails out straight behind them, and set off across the moor; Dash began to “whumper,” and Meg fairly “yowled.” Now and then they were hidden for a few seconds by a hillock, but they soon reappeared. They took a bee-line across the heather; we watched them cross the march, grind up the opposite slope, and then they faded from our view. Talk of a hound-trail—none better was ever seen amongst the fells of Cumberland.

I stared blankly in the direction the dogs had gone. I did not dare to look at Mr. Weatherby; he broke out into a storm of fury, and condemned the dogs, and myself, and the shepherd, and the moor, to the hottest place he could think of. I said nothing in answer to all this—only looked at the shepherd; and the shepherd—“he lay low.”

The bag consisted of one grouse that Twelfth. If the dogs had re-appeared on the scene by the time we reached home, I think there would have been two setters added to the total; but they did not. I left Mr. Weatherby when near the lodge, telling him the toothache had come on again, and flew to my small dwelling.

There, sitting in the last stage of exhaustion on his bed, was Robert. He was dirty to a degree, and neither his knickerbockers nor stockings showed any signs of their original colours. There was an awful smell of aniseed in the room. It appeared that he had safely reached the place where the scent was to be laid first, and had just arranged the rabbit-skin to his satisfaction, when he became aware of a man crouching down at some little distance, and evidently watching him. Robert said at first that he had walked slowly away, but afterwards admitted he had perhaps run a little, and I soon found out that he had run a great deal. The man started in pursuit, and Robert made the best of his way across the moor. But after proceeding with great rapidity for some time he tumbled over a tump of grass, and the bottle of aniseed, which he had put for safety in his trousers-pocket, was broken in the fall. He said that this was perhaps what the dogs had been hunting,—and I thought so too: I could have given him an hour’s start, and hunted him with great ease myself—he smelt as if he had been dipped in aniseed.

I had barely time to take in all this, still less elaborate any plan for the future, when there was a knock at the door, and, without waiting for an answer, in came a man—the shepherd. He sniffed once or twice with great noise and deliberation, and I thought he grinned, and then he said—

“The maister’s waiting to see Mistar Rowbert in the Leebrary.”

Robert’s face was too dirty to get white, but his lips quivered as they formed the word “Now?”

“Ay, the noo—at wanst,” said the shepherd.

“I’ll just change my clothes first, I think,” said the agitated Robert. “I’ve—I’ve—had a little—accident, shepherd.”

Once more there seemed a curious struggle in that individual’s countenance between austerity and mirth, and again he loudly scented the air. He gave no reprieve. “But he’s waiting,” he said; and he almost button-holed the reluctant lad, and took him out of the room.

I had a terrible foreboding as to who that watcher on the moor had been. After a decent interval, I followed the two to the house, and, as I had had no time to communicate with my friend, and was quite ignorant of what he was going to say, I thought it wise to get into the middle of a laurel-bush which stood just opposite the window and garden-door of Mr. Weatherby’s smoking-room. I was disappointed in my plan, for I could hear nothing articulate; indeed, after a few minutes, I doubt if there was anything articulate to hear. For a short time I could hear nothing at all, but I knew Robert was in the room, and had gone in by that door,—I could smell him.

Then I heard a loud voice, a stuttering, stammering vociferation, the sound of a struggle, the breakage of something brittle, a plaintive cry in a different key, and then the door was thrown violently open. I, crouching in the laurel-bush, watched. Robert came out first. I saw Mr. Weatherby had him by what seemed the skin of his neck. Breathless, I saw the old bag-merchant poise himself on one leg, and then I experienced a violent concussion in my leafy hiding-place,—the plotter and the tool met in the laurel-bush. Robert’s ideas had been very much confused by his day’s work, especially by the last part of it, and I think when he saw me he imagined that Mr. Weatherby had somehow managed to run round the bush to meet him and kick him again: he jumped back with the greatest possible alacrity, and fled like a hare down the avenue.

I instinctively shrank closer to the ground: the old man saw the movement. With what I can only call a howl, he sprang at me; but I was too nimble for him. No one ever ran, or ever will run, faster from that house than I did that fatal day. I upset Miss Weatherby, who was coming up from the farm, and left her sitting wildly gesticulating amongst dozens of broken eggs. I soon distanced her brother, and got out of his territory. I spent a miserable night at a little inn, miles off; and after hovering about the next day, trying to make up my mind to venture back for some clothes, I gave it up, and left that hilly country for good.

It is but justice to Mr. Weatherby to say that he sent me my personal effects, and what he called my “wages.” I have never seen him since, or been within a hundred miles of him; but I understand that the sanctimonious shepherd has taken the place of the amateur factor.