good trout. In fact, one year the score of fish taken from them averaged within an ounce of two pounds apiece.

The other gun, with the attendant figure of the ghillie, has now got round the loch and has begun to walk the outlying snipe ground. He fires two shots and bags the snipe; the first shot puts up a lot of six widgeon from the far end of the loch. They circle back to Dunscaur, the loch of reeds. It is at this moment that a large flight of peewits, and with them fifteen or a dozen golden plover, swing over and settle on the island. I rise and make signs to the other gun, who waves his hand in reply and begins to approach in the direction I indicate. I take out a glass and watch him. I can see the crested heads of the lapwings, but no sign of the golden plover, which are over on the other side of the rise. The other gun crawls up, and I hear both barrels, but it is impossible to see the result or results of the shot. And now we begin to walk our different shores. Here there is a whisp of snipe, there a duck, and a dozen times one sinks down behind the nearest stone or tuft when a curlew or a flock of plover seems to be approaching. Thus we come to the Big Bog. The Big Bog is a place of memories, thick as currants on a stalk. It was here that Donald, the ghillie of a bygone day, informed one unfortunate sportsman, by whom he was not attracted, but who had rented the place with gold of Glasgow, that you juist went straight forward and it wasna vera deep.' History tells how he of Glasgow was hauled out later with ropes.

Indeed, when all is said and done, the Big Bog is a spot where it behoves one to be careful. Into certain parts of it you cannot go ; in others you have to pay the price, which means reeking mud to the waist. In the days of my youth I was wont to go straight through it, since at that period of life it is hard to recognise that in snipe and duck shooting, as in other things, physical effort is not everything. How many times, how many hundreds of times, have I not found the air above me torn with complaining snipe, while a dozen mallard and teal sprang from the pools around, just as I sank to my middle in the mud and reeds, and from a hopeless position, one foot perhaps buried twelve or eighteen inches deeper than the other, I fired the hopeless, or almost hopeless, shot, which was often more in the nature of a salute than anything else. Now we rarely walk the Big Bog, but line up instead along the reedy loch shore beneath the old kirk, while David and John, armed with clappers made of packing-case boards, drive the birds over us. By this manœuvre the old peppering or plastering of rising duck is done away with,

and though we do not get as many snipe, we often get some 'butterflies that is, snipe killed literally thirty-five or forty yards up, which come down with wings still spread.

It was in the Big Bog that David the valet, a good sportsman, always ready to get up before daylight to drive geese or to take his chance in the Big Bog, once found himself in a very bad place, the mud up to his shoulders and with a good chance of sinking farther. At his cries I ran to his assistance, and approaching through the reeds saw him striving to lift himself from the clinging mud; and when he failed and paused for breath, I heard the ghillie, who was squatting on his haunches in safety near by, say with an air of finality, Ay, David man, ye'll never lay a tea again!'

Such is the Big Bog in early autumn when the reeds are green and high, and save for the stream which flows through the centre of it there are but a dozen pools or so. In these pools the mallard, the teal, and the shoveller, of which last there are a good sprinkling, congregate, and stirred from thence by a pair of clappers and a hoarse voice they fly straight down for the loch, and each time the place is driven they fly higher. Later in the year there is no cover, the reeds are brown and beaten by the raving island winds, the bog is flooded, it is deserted by the ducks, but day and night is the home and sanctuary of some hundreds of grey geese, sometimes of bernicle, more rarely of a few white-fronts. At this time of year very few ducks are killed on the Big Bog. He who would be successful there must do his work before the sun is far over the hills, or after it has sunk in the angry sea.

But enough of the Big Bog, and I shall not describe any shooting done there. In an arm of it I remember a very handsome dog belonging to one of my guests being drowned. He swallowed some of the black mud, and, though we got him out, he died. But hitherto the Bog has been no murderer, nor has it sucked down a human life.

Very different to the cold long waits when flighting by the pool of the Bog are the lovely September evenings spent in the stooks, or better yet in the still standing corn. Here is the perfection of duck-shooting of the contemplative sort. In this kind of shooting I have never, as far as mallard are concerned, pushed an advantage home, though it is different with teal, which all leave later in the year-at least, they certainly do desert the Big Bog.

It is easy enough to recognise when and where ducks are coming into the corn. Feather droppings and the ears destroyed are a VOL. XXXVII.—NO. 222, N.S.

49

certain guide. Give the ducks a week, and then go and sit back to wind in the high corn near by. As soon as the crofter or labourer 'homeward wends his weary way' the ducks will begin to come in. It is wiser not to fire at the first two parties. Let them pitch. During the whole sunset hour the ducks will continue to come in, and you can make the shooting as easy or as difficult (both within limits) as you will. The birds will, however much they circle, settle finally against the wind. This is the moment at which to kill all wild birds if a big bag be your object. The huge bags of woodpigeons are ninety per cent. filled within twenty yards of the branch or spot on which they had determined to alight. But with ducks, if you want difficult shooting, turn the other way and face up wind. The ducks will come in very fast, will sweep in, in fact, ere they turn into the wind to steady themselves, and from your cramped position you will need all the quick swing you can command to bring them down. It is glorious sport. A blue evening sky, the rippling, waving corn, the gloom that precedes night makes a dusk upon the shores of the loch, the swish of wings, the solid face and deep-brown eyes of the old dog, about whom you have no illusions, or the brighter eyes of the young one, concerning whom you perchance have many, and when the sun is long gone and the ducks become dark cloves against the patches of fading brightness. And now that it is dark, you can hear the ducks, you can see them no longer. You rise; you have fifteen gathered, and two you think are down, which were too far off to send the dog for during the flight. You send him now. He succeeds and retrieves both. Then, heavily laden, but ballasted with a great content, you walk off to the Lodge. Long lies the way, for you have to skirt great areas of marsh.

Once, after a late September corn-shoot, a thick fog came down, and it took two hours of feeling and touching to find the path; but to-night it is clear, the stars are out, the smoke of peat redolent of many memories arises from the cottages, and presently a hot bath and a glass of sherry complete the perfection of content. At dinner you discuss the morrow's plans. Shall we have the boat and go to Deasker or Causamull, or even distant Haskeir, where dwell the mighty seals, or shall we try the inland heather country, or the geese upon the promontory ponds? Shall we get up at four or shall we leave it till after breakfast? These are the discussions over the coffee. And then a pipe in the moonlight among the midges, and so to bed to dream until we arise on the morrow.

Forgotten is London and the smell of asphalt, the desk is a faroff memory, the newspaper comes like a message from a forgotten state of things. It is rarely necessary to write a letter, and hands hardened with gun and sail and oar close clumsily upon the pen. All this is good, and in it we forget the day when the collars will be put on the dogs and the luggage on the cart, while we, mounting the trap, shall drive through the plover-haunted land past the isle of Kirkibost, the isle of geese, and then, turning, leave behind the open sandy lands and plunge into the dark hills, and so steering by the grim Mount Eval come to Lochmaddy, a kind of Venice of the Hebrides, in that men and women visit it by boat, and there, after hearing who has caught what at the Hotel, aboard the steamer for eighteen hours of the Minch and ocean. It has its uses, even this journey, for it takes the mind from what one is leaving. Late the next night, perchance, as one drives through the lighted streets and sees the placards of London and the white faces, the hum, the roar, the ten thousand solicitations of shop and theatre, one goes back in thought-the Lodge is dark, the little round grass patch in front is soaked in dew, the loch reflects the stars. Far up, far up beneath them all, there is a noise like a wise man inarticulate. The grey geese are flighting from Cuirheara.

H. HESKETH PRICHARD.

THE WOMAN.

I.

It was April, and in his little bedroom in the Muswell Hill boardinghouse, where Mrs. Morrison (assisted, as you found out later, by Miss Gertie Morrison) took in a few select paying guests, George Crosby was packing. Spring came in softly through his open window; it whispered to him tales of green hedges and misty woods and close-cropped rolling grass. Collars,' said George, trying to shut his ears to it, 'handkerchiefs, ties-I knew I'd forgotten something; ties.' He pulled open a drawer. Ties, shirts-where's my list ?-shirts, ties.' He wandered to the window and looked out. Muswell Hill was below him, but he hardly saw it. Three weeks,' he murmured. Heaven for three weeks, and it hasn't even begun yet.' There was the splendour of it. It hadn't begun; it didn't begin till to-morrow. He went back in a dream to his packing. Collars,' he said, shirts, ties-ties

Miss Gertie Morrison had not offered to help him this year. She had not forgotten that she had put herself forward the year before, when George had stammered and blushed (he found blushing very easy in the Muswell Hill boarding-house), and Algy Traill, the humorist of the establishment, had winked and said, George, old boy, you're in luck; Gertie never packs for me.' Algy had continued the joke by smacking his left hand with his right, and saying in an undertone, Naughty boy, how dare you call her Gertie?' and then in a falsetto voice: Oh, Mr. Crosby, I'm sure Then Mrs. Morrison from

I never meant to put myself forward!' her end of the table called out

But I can see that I shall have to explain the Muswell Hill ménage to you. I can do it quite easily while George is finishing his packing. He is looking for his stockings now, and that always takes him a long time, because he hasn't worn them since last April, and they are probably under the bed.

Well, Mrs. Morrison sits at one end of the table and carves. Suppose it is Tuesday evening. Cold beef or hash, Mr. Traill ?' she asks, and Algy probably says 'Yes, please,' which makes two of the boarders laugh. These are two pale brothers called Fossett, younger than you who read this have ever been, and enthusiastic