Chapter II: Part 2

When Abdullah, the slave dealer, led the long file of loaded camels towards the desert on the bright April morning, only one of his animals remained in the fandak. Within a week she had a companion, her little baby camel who came into the world as though to give her his company during the long, hot months of summer when, at the sun's bidding, the caravan that had just set out would cease from its labours and rest in the far-off city of Timbuctoo.

The fandak was a large rectangular enclosure open to the sky everywhere save in the cloisters round the inside walls. It was filthily dirty, and full of flies and insects, but Basha the baby camel noted none of these things. He passed his early days wandering round the cloisters to look at the half-starved mules and donkeys that were brought in there for their much needed rest, and when the heat was greatest and the flies most insistent, he would lie contentedly by his mother's side. For all the fandak's limitations Basha had been born in fortunate hour. His mother's services were not required in field or city, heavy spring rains had made food plentiful and cheap, so that she was well fed, and the little one, who by the way was two feet odd inches high when he was born, enjoyed an unfailing supply of milk. Had he come into the world at another time or place, his mother might have been put to work hard before he was three months old, her milk might have been required for cheese, and he would have pined and died as so many baby camels do. Even when the summer waned and the autumn rains starred the fields with flowers of bewildering beauty, Basha stayed with his mother on a farm outside the city gates. The caravan came back in the season of cool weather and in place of the merchandise they had taken to the South, the camels brought slaves for the Sok el Abeed, but they could not go out again. Between them and the Soudan the fierce veiled Touaregs of the desert were in arms, and in the direction of the coast the chief camel road was held by the braves of a tribe that was in open revolt against Morocco's Sultan.

So, while Abdullah swore strange oaths by the Prophet's beard, and declared that the men of the desert were descended from devils and the men of the western province from apes, little Basha grew strong and unshapely, and life was an affair of sunshine and good milk. Day by day the farmer spread his mother's food before her on a cloth; dried beans, crushed date stones and a very small measure of corn and chopped hay, and Basha would sniff at it with very little interest. If the farmer himself was absent the cloth might be forgotten, and then Mother Camel would make an angry noise in her throat and refuse to eat, and little Basha would suffer accordingly.

"Why must you have a cloth to eat from?" he asked her one day, when she was gurgling indignantly while the rats made merry at her expense, and she made no attempt to check their depredations.

"It is Camel Law," replied his mother. "If we were to eat our food from the bare ground we should take all manner of dirt into our mouths, and in a little while it would make us ill, perhaps fatally. Our inside arrangements are very delicate and complicated. In the fandak two camels and no more will feed from one mat or cloth, and it is right that there should be precedence at meal-times. The most important camels should be fed first. That is etiquette, and we set a great store by it. Indeed, if this consideration is overlooked we let our masters know about it."

"But when you leave your food, I get less milk," remonstrated Basha.

"You can't begin too early," explained the Mother Camel, "to understand that all camels must suffer. It is part of our life to work hard, to endure ill-treatment and to be deprived of our fair share of good things. Down to the present your good luck has been astonishing. Your brother and sister, one born seven years ago and the other four, died of starvation before they had lived through one summer. I myself was born in the country of the black men south of the Atlas mountains, and had to come here with my mother across the desert before I was six months old."

Basha took small account of these warnings. He could do no more than judge life as he found it, and do credit to his environment by growing to be a fine specimen of his race. When at length he was taken from his mother he was fully a year old, and he enjoyed some idle months on the farm land, living for the most part upon green herbage, and straying far and wide in search of camel thorn, r'tam, tamarisk and mimosa. When he had found his favourite bush, he would run his upper lip over the leaves as though to assure himself that they were what he sought, but if he knew what he liked he did not know what was good for him. A wandering Bedouin shepherd came upon him one morning just as he was beginning to sniff with appreciation at some leaves that would have finished his career at once, and thereafter Basha's liberty was curtailed and he had his first experience of the manacles. They were made of steel and fitted round each fore-leg above the ankle. This was a most effective device, for a camel walks moving both legs on the same side simultaneously, and the steel was capable of arresting the walk altogether. He had to endure many long and painful hours in this confinement.

As he was quite unconscious of having done anything to deserve such treatment, and knew nothing of his own stupidity, Basha was full of indignation and kicked with his hind-legs at all passers, exhibiting early signs of bad temper. Then the first evil days came to him, and in the picturesque language of his master he "ate the stick" until he knew fear and understood the virtue of docility. But in after days when he was goaded beyond endurance he always kicked out with his hind-legs, and he learned that many camels do the same when they are angry, although their fore limbs are much stronger than the hind ones. Perhaps the early use of the shackles accounts for this tendency, which is common to the most of African camels.

If his training in those early days was cruel, Basha was no worse off than his fellows. He had to learn to endure the saddle and the pack, to kneel at word of command, and to go with the other camels on short journeys carrying some light load in preparation for the trying days to come. He grew very slowly but managed to preserve a good condition, clearly to be seen in the rising hump and in the well-covered skin. Camels that were overworked or underfed lost their hump, and if they had any serious illness, their skin looked like a moth-eaten fur.

In his fifth year when he was reckoned fit for the full measure of work Basha was a very finely developed beast, even though his ugliness was undeniable. His long, thick upper lip was divided in two, and this peculiarity accounted in part for his perpetual sneer; his eyes, the one redeeming feature of his head, were shaded by heavy brow and coarse eyelashes; his ears were very small and round and he acquired the curious power of compressing his nostrils that was to be so serviceable in days to come. His legs were long and thin, and the great shapeless feet in which they terminated looked very absurd; his walk was little better than an awkward flat-footed shuffle. His tail was short and stumpy, and his mode of resting had brought well-defined hard growths to his chest and knees. He could travel without fatigue over endless miles of level ground, but hills tired him at once; and he could swim sturdily though nothing but the most severe thirst would make him drink of running water. His early-day nervousness had gone though he was still restive when taken from his companions. He seldom called as he had been in the habit of doing when he was young, but with manhood, if the term be permissible, he had developed a violent temper, and there were seasons of the year when only Abdullah dare approach him. At these times he would grow very excited, he would repeat the horrid gurgling noise that his mother had made, and would go about with a hideous pink bladder hanging from one side of his mouth. At the first sign of this state among his male camels Abdullah would seek to reduce their rage by bloodletting. The camels would be hobbled in turn and told to sit down, and after a cord had been tied tightly round the neck two small incisions would be made just below the cord. This was an effective cure for ferocity, but was not always a possible remedy when the camels were on the march, for it left them very weak.

In the first year of his complete strength Basha was hired with two other camels by a Moor who traded between the Atlantic coast and Marrakesh, the far southern capital of the Moorish Empire. The work was hard and the loads were heavy, but the Moor did not spare himself. The start from coast or capital would be made in the very early morning hours. The camels would be loaded in skilful fashion, the weight being put as high on the ribs as possible, because the hind limbs were so much weaker than the others. If there was any mistake or the weight was unfairly heavy, the camels would gurgle angrily and refuse to rise. Then some fresh adjustment was necessary for Abd el Karim knew better than to waste his time in trying to force an ill-loaded or over-strained animal to his feet. Once a camel had risen and started he would go until he dropped, but no animal would rise before being satisfied that he was being fairly handled. In those early hours the beasts would be fed with cakes made of crushed grain and dates, mixed for choice with camel milk or, failing that, with water. The meal over, the little procession would start out well in advance of sunrise, and when the first halt was called it would be to avoid the midday sun and give the weary men a little time to repose. When the journey was resumed it would be kept up until night was falling and it was no longer safe to be found on any one of the broad tracks that served the southern countries for a road. Then Abd el Karim would seek an ensala, a piece of bare ground next some village, fenced round with cactus thorn and prickly pear. He would pay the equivalent of a few pence for admission, and once there the headman of the village would be responsible to the nearest country governor for the safety of the little company. The camels would be unloaded, watered and fed, three or four pounds of grain being the maximum supply for each beast, and they would enjoy some six hours' rest. But as soon as the false dawn appeared in the sky and Abd el Karim had said the early morning prayer that is called the fejer, and comes with the third cock-crow, loads would be replaced and the journey resumed. Basha plodded along with seeming content, but in his heart he hated his new master. It was not that he had any special unkindness to complain about, the ill-treatment was quite impartial, he hated all humans, and Abd el Karim stood for him as the type of the tyrants who inflicted such base servitude upon the camel world. He had no pet grievance, and would most certainly have resented any special act of kindness as an impertinence. Whatever kindly feelings he might have had were kept under so severely that his face had but two expressions. He looked upon the world with indignation and contempt in turn. When he walked through the narrow streets of Marrakesh carrying a pack that weighed between three and four hundred pounds upon his shoulders, he would turn neither to the right nor to the left; horses, mules and pedestrians had perforce to make way for him. Not only was he prepared to walk over anything that stood in his way, he was ready to turn round and bite any passer who came within reach of his mouth. From nose to tail he could not have been less than eight feet long in those days, and he stood more than six feet high from hump to ground. In brief, Basha was an ill-natured, sulky beast, but his powers of endurance gave him a value for which all his little failings were forgiven.

In the camel fandak at Marrakesh where he had first seen the daylight he would join the rest of Abdullah's animals from time to time and hear of their adventurous journeys to the Soudan. His mother was still at work among them and had lost another son since Basha was born. She was ageing now under the combined influences of hard work and insufficient food, and the sight of her condition roused her son to a state of anger in which pity took no part. He had no affection for her, but her state increased the bitterness of his feelings against the enemy man. From time to time he noted the disappearance of animals he had known and asked about them.

"He fell," replied his mother once, referring to a camel of his own age, "and then you know the old cry."

"I don't," confessed Basha, "what do you mean?"

"It has passed into the proverbs of our masters," said his mother slowly. "'When the camel falls,' runs their adage, 'out with your knives.' It is a recognition of our undying pluck. So long as we can endure we keep up and when we fall we are beaten and done for. No rest can cure us. Our masters know that, and when we fall in our tracks their knives are out--sometimes before we are dead."

Basha turned away, sick with anger. This then was the end of things, to labour through the heat of day, to toil until the last store of strength was exhausted, and then die a dishonourable death under the curved daggers of brutal masters. How he hated them, one and all.

It was on account of his recent losses that Abdullah decided to include Basha in the next caravan that left Marrakesh for the South, and so it happened that he made one of a string of fifty beasts that filed out of the city by way of the Dukala Gate on a fine September morning. For some weeks past the camels had rested and had been tended with an approach to care. Before a final selection was made each animal was examined with care and a few were rejected on account of ailments that were plain to the practical eyes of Abdullah and his assistants. Chief of these disqualifying symptoms was a foot disease brought on by overwork, and the fate of Basha's mother hung in the balance for she was beginning to show signs of the unending labour imposed upon her. But there was a fair sporting chance for her, and Abdullah took it. The unaccustomed rest of the past three weeks and the regular food had almost restored her strength.

Although he was now in his tenth year Basha had not crossed the Sahara. He had not finished growing but was immensely strong, and the journey had no terrors for him. For the first few days the land was one vast oasis and the camels went unwatered, feeding in the very early morning before the dew was off the autumn greenery, and so storing enough moisture to last them through the day. They were well fed at night, and Basha began to think that the difficulties of which his companions spoke after supper when they sat in a great group, had been exaggerated. Then the caravan reached the real desert beyond the Draa country, and he understood. The sun was like molten copper above, and the sands seemed white-hot underneath. Vegetation ceased. No man spoke, and at night the hours of respite from the heat seemed to fly. A reserve stock of water was carried in goat-skin barrels on some of the camels, but Abdullah made a detour in order to reach the oases that lay scattered here and there. And when the wells at one of these oases were found to be dry, the real troubles of the journey commenced. Supplies were reduced all round as they moved towards the next oasis, and on the second morning following the reduction the desert was swept by a dust-storm.

Long before Abdullah and his companions could note its approach, the leading camels saw the advancing columns of the storm, and with one accord they dropped to their knees and crouched with their long necks stretched out and their nostrils firmly closed to face the coming trouble. The men shrouded themselves in their haiks and crouched on the ground, taking refuge with Allah from Satan and his legions, for they knew well that the sand columns were really djinoon, who went about the desert seeking whom they might devour. When the legions of the storm had passed, and men and beasts arose to continue the journey, the terror of the desert lay heavily upon one and all.

The caravan had a mournful appearance as it laboured across the desert in the tracks of the storm. Camels shuffled along with the hopeless, listless energy of creatures attuned to suffering in its every form; the men, riding or walking, seemed to have yielded to the depression that the Sahara knows so well. Shifting sand and raging wind had hidden the tracks, but Abdullah and Abd el Karim, who was acting as his lieutenant, had rare eyes, and they corrected their bearings by the stars at night. For perhaps the first time in his life Basha realised the cunning economy of his body. His stomach had four compartments, to say nothing of cells, that served for the preservation of the water-supply, and he could regulate the flow of food and water in manner that took the keen edge from his sufferings. Men suffered more than beasts, but they had the consolation of their faith. "Mektub," they muttered, when Abdullah pointed out the need for diminished rations lest the next oasis should fail them, "it is written". If their safe arrival in the far-off Abaradiou of Timbuctoo was decreed, no dust storm would avail to stay them; if they were to be one of the caravans that the pitiless Sahara swallows up, no complaint would avail to avert the evil decree.

At night when the packs were removed and the men smoked the forbidden haschish over their scanty supper, or took council with the star Sohail that served to guide them to the South, the camels held converse after their own fashion.

"The end is upon me," cried Basha's mother one evening, "My feet are worn away. It is not for me to see the Niger's bank or to eat the camel thorn in the woods beyond the Mosque of Sankoréh".

"It is well, mother," said the camel crouched by her side; "you will rest at least. We shall go on, and your load will be added to ours. Rejoice then in the end of the day's work." And late on the following afternoon, at the hour when the sun first appeared to relent of his pitiless severity, Basha saw his mother stoop slowly to the earth.

"A camel falls," cried Abd el Karim, who walked by his side, "out with your knives." He leapt forward, Basha saw the red stain in the white sand, and then passed on with averted eyes. A few camels gurgled to express sympathy or indignation, three or four were stopped by Abdullah's orders and the burden of the dead beast was divided among them. Then the march was resumed, and in the evening an oasis was reached where there were date palms in plenty, and a well untouched by drought. Far into the night the water was poured into the puddled troughs from the goat-skin bucket that served the well, each of the camels receiving ten or twelve gallons--enough to quench their raging thirst and give them a store for two or even three days.

Half of the party remained at the oasis, the other half under Abdullah's guidance turned aside to El Djouf, the desert city where the merchandise of the camels would be exchanged for the great blocks of salt that were worth their weight in gold, and slaves in far-off villages beyond Timbuctoo. Basha was one of the camels that remained behind, and he sat through the night with sleepless eyes seeing ever before him the dead body of his mother, and hearing Abd el Karim's horrid cry. It was anger with the living rather than pity for the dead that fed his growing wrath. A light breeze stirred the palm leaves, he heard the far-off cry of a jackal and then the patter of little feet. This last sound came nearer until a company of desert antelope ran in view. Undisturbed by the camels they ranged in search of green food, and drank of the water remaining in the puddled troughs as though indifferent to the proximity of the sleeping men.

One, who seemed to be the leader of the deer, paused by Basha's side.

"Little master," said the camel, "whence come you, and what have you seen?"

"We range the sands," replied the stranger, "from the oasis that is tended by man even to the far-off spring that only the gazelles have seen. And to-night we fly from El Kebeer, the great jackal, who has brought his pack in search of meat."

"Where is he now?" asked Basha, shuddering.

"All are together now," said the gazelle. "They have found the body of an old mother camel fallen by the way. Until the morning comes they will hardly leave the spot, and ere then we shall be miles from here. We shall seek green places that the desert hides from all save us, we shall rejoice in our freedom and our peaceful lives. Farewell."

He slipped noiselessly into the shadows and was gone. But Basha sat wakeful and watchful through the night.

With the break of day the most of the camels in the oasis rose to search for the young green growths that held the dew, but Basha sat silent.

"Fool," cried Abd el Karim, staggering from his tent, the haschish dreams still clouding his brain; "art thou too among the sick? Shall I kill thee, or wilt thou eat, O thrice cursed beast?"

"Leave me while there is time," growled Basha, but Abd el Karim heard no more than the usual angry gurgle, and drawing off one of his slippers he struck Basha across the mouth.

With a curious cry like a trumpet-call Basha shuffled to his feet, and Abd el Karim, realising that some awful change had come to his charge, turned and ran.

In long slanting strides, with outstretched neck, lowered head and open mouth, Basha pursued noisily. The other camels were feeding behind the palm grove, their guardians with them, Abd el Karim had run towards the desert. But the drug he favoured had made his feet unsteady; in the hour of his direst need he slipped and fell. Basha's teeth closed on the white haik that enveloped his master, and then he came down slowly to a sitting position and thrust the man, senseless now from fright, between the smooth rock and the bony ridge of his chest.

When he rose and ran towards the open desert he was mad, doomed to run until he dropped and died. But the man he had left prone on the rock that had tripped him would never, never rise again.

* * * * *

Many days later, in the great fandak of the Abaradiou beyond the gates of Timbuctoo, Abdullah told his friend the slave-merchant of the journey. "We had two anxious days," he said, "but the grace of Allah was upon all save Abd el Karim. One of the camels that had never known the desert broke down and went mad. Perhaps the man had ill-treated him, perhaps even strove to stop him. Who shall say more than that Abd el Karim's hour had come? May Allah have pardoned him."

THE RED GROUSE

When he woke to being, and left the warm shelter of his mother's feathers to take a look at the world around him, the sun was smiling upon the purple heather, and a light wind was stirring the leaves of birch and mountain-ash in the plantation below. He was no more than a tiny ball of yellow fluff with some dark-brown marks on back and sides, and a chestnut patch on his head, and there were eight brothers and sisters exactly like each other, waiting for him by the side of the heather tuft under which his mother had been hatching her eggs.

His father sat on another tuft a few yards away, spreading his plumage in the sunlight, and the little grouse thought he was fortunate in having such a handsome parent. The head, neck, breast and sides of Father Grouse were of a very bright chestnut colour, with black lines across, his lower feathers were darker, but tipped with white, to show his pure Highland breeding.

"Kok-kok," said Father Grouse. "What a fine family I have to be sure. The stupid gamekeeper put his foot in our first nest and we had to make another one. So you are all very late. June is already here, the other birds on the moor can fly by now. Kok-kok."

Then he and his wife broke off the tiny fresh tops of the heather, and the little bird, having been fed with his brothers and sisters, ran about in the sun till it went down, and then crept back to the nest where the shells of broken eggs had been lying, pale cream shells covered with heavy blotches of red. The little grouse, warm under his mother's feathers and above the moss that lined the nest, slept quite happily, dreaming of the days when he would be able to fly over the moor. He woke with a start hearing his father crying:--

"Who goes there? Who goes there? my sword, my sword."

"Don't be frightened," said Mother Grouse reassuringly, as the little ones nestle closer to her, "he says that every morning."

The newcomer soon became accustomed to be called at daybreak by this startling cry, and he learned as soon to hide from the buzzard, the peregrine falcon and the carrion crows that, between them, eventually managed to secure all his brothers, because they would not listen to their father's warning. Mrs. Grouse had decided at last that the last big egg, which was as broad at one end as at the other, held no son or daughter, and as soon as she had made up her mind about that she put on her summer dress; it was buff-coloured and marked with irregular bars of black. When the family had admired it they flew together across the heather. Father Grouse had no summer dress; he did not change his costume before autumn.

The family kept to the moor, where they met many very pleasant relatives with children quite grown up, so much like their mothers that it was hard to tell the difference, and while they were together Father Grouse gave his only son a lot of useful information.

"We keep to the heather," he said. "It is our own. On the hills beyond," and he pointed to the mountain behind the moor, "you find our cousins, the ptarmigan. In the plantation below the hills where there are birch, hazel, ash and juniper trees and where the roebuck hides in the ferns, you have another cousin, the blackcock. He feeds with us sometimes. We have not much to do with either of them, though we are not unfriendly. Kok-kok."

It was a very fine summer, the heather was fresh and sweet to eat, and very warm to lie on. The little grouse soon lost the yellow down that had covered him, and his plumage became very much like his mother's. The family would fly about in a group, father and mother leading, and they often went off the heather to eat the grass and early berries.

"I have lived more than one whole year," said Father Grouse, "but I was born in a very bad season. The heather was bitten by the frost, the rain was unceasing, we could not get enough food, and it was terribly cold on the wet ground. Hundreds died--but lie down, somebody is coming."

The family crouched low in the heather and saw the landlord's factor walking up the hill-side with a stout gentleman who wore an unbecoming coat and a waistcoat with a heavy watch chain across it. The stout gentleman passed a handkerchief across his forehead. "It is a fine view," he gasped, "and what are the limits of the bag?"

"Eight hundred brace of grouse may be shot and forty stags but the laird is not a hard man and might make it a thousand brace and fifty stags," said the factor, who had forgotten how to blush.

"Now," whispered Father Grouse, and uttering a challenge, he rose within three yards of the stout gentleman, closely followed by wife and family.

"You see," said the factor, "the moor is packed with birds, you can almost walk over them."

"Why did you show yourself like that, my dear?" said Mother Grouse, when they had settled after a long easy flight.

"Ah," replied her husband, "you leave me to attend to my own business. I like to see men like that on the moor, they do no harm. It is the young, slender men who are never tired and are always shooting that I object to. You can't get away from them, Kok-kok."

"Did you hear the factor," continued Father Grouse, after as near an approach to a chuckle as a red grouse can achieve. "He said the bag was limited to eight hundred brace, though the laird might make the limit up to a thousand. Now there are not two hundred and fifty brace on the moor. As for the stags, fancy a man like that trying to stalk them; well, let us go and eat some heather-tops--such talk makes me feel weak."

They were glorious days that led to the middle of August. The young grouse was becoming quite big; he could take long flights without fatigue, could accomplish a small call, was an adept at finding good food and soft sleeping places, and he never allowed his attentions to stray from his feathered enemies.

He had some narrow escapes; on one occasion the peregrine falcon struck down one of his sisters as she was flying by his side; on another the great Golden Eagle, coming from his eyrie on the mountain top, was circling over him, but suddenly saw a young deer calf on a rock not far away. The rock looked over the bare hill-side, and the eagle, lighting on the poor calf's back, buffeted its face so heavily with his wings that it fell off the rock and, tumbling down, was killed on the hill-side. The Golden Eagle made his meal, the fox and the carrion crow took what was left. It was a sad sight, and the Golden Eagle was more unpopular than ever on the moor and in the forest.

The young grouse made the acquaintance of the biggest deer on the hill, a king of stags, with brow, bay and tray antlers, who explained that he was a stag royal. This acquaintance was made one afternoon in early August when the grouse family were feeding on some succulent grasses by the side of the burn where the stag came to drink.

"I am more than pleased to meet you again," said the stag. "I wish you and your family as sure an escape from the shot gun as I hope to get from the rifle." So saying he trotted off, and Father Grouse spread his feathers just as though he had been a blackcock in a juniper tree, and challenged as loudly as he could.

"Last September," he said, turning to his wondering son, "after my parents had met with misfortune passing over the butts, I found myself on some high ground near the big corrie. The royal stag you saw just now was resting there with his family, and he had been seen by the stalker. I was sitting on a heather tuft thinking that now I had lost my parents I should have to join the grouse pack, when I saw the stalker and the man who shoots the stags, crawling along the ground in my direction. They wanted to get behind the stag and shoot him as he sat head to wind.

"I can see them now--the stalker very cool, and the shooter very tired. As I looked I thought I recognised him as the man who had shot my parents. I did not hesitate, but rose up when they were almost near enough to touch me, flew within hearing of the stag and called out:--

"Who goes there? The gun, the gun."

"The royal stag and all his family scattered, the stalker put down his gun and took up his whisky-flask; the man who had shot my parents used language no respectable grouse could listen to without feeling ashamed. They went to the wood for their lunch and my cousin, the grey hen, heard the stalker say he thought they had walked twelve miles after that stag. Kok-kok."

It was good to be alive in those August days, to wake up when the sun started work, look out for food in the morning and late afternoon, and lie close through the heat of the day. The southerner had taken the shooting on lease and spent one or two days looking over the land, to the great delight of Father Grouse, who declared that no bird need suffer uneasiness on his account.

"All old men," said Father Grouse, "would fire into a pack without hurting anything." This was on the night of the 11th August which happened to fall on Saturday. Sunday, the 12th, brought no guns to the moor, and Father Grouse was first puzzled and then delighted. "I have it," he said at last; "there will be no grouse shot this year, that stout man knows he will have no chance against us. He will try to shoot stags because they are bigger. Kok-kok."

Monday, the 13th of August, found the grouse family up betimes; they fed heartily, as was their custom, and then retired to shelter from the heat. Father Grouse, Mother Grouse, three daughters and the one son, comprised the family now. Once or twice Mother Grouse stirred uneasily and said she heard men, but her husband remonstrated with her.

"You are very nervous, my dear," he said, "haven't I told you there will be no shooting this year? They will be cutting the corn in the lower fields soon, and we'll go down there to feed on the stooks. You want a change of diet to strengthen your nerves. I know well enough you have no occasion for uneasiness."

* * * * *

"It's no good starting too early," the head keeper had said at the lodge on the previous evening, "give the birds time to eat and time to settle down, and then you'll do all right."

And on the morning of the 13th he had declared that the breeze was just what was wanted, and that everything pointed to a successful day. The party, four guns and two keepers, with retrievers, had gone steadily from the low ground where the lodge stood, across the fresh-cut fields, over the hill-side and on to the moor. The heather was short and pointers were not used on it.

The old gentleman who took the moor did not shoot, but his three sons and nephew were first-class shots. While Father Grouse was saying his last words, he had seen them, and had realised that the men with the guns were young and sturdy, just the sort he had learned to fear. In that trying moment he realised how he had deceived himself and family, and how the gunners, by coming up the wind, had made it impossible for him to scent them in time.

"Rise quickly with me," he whispered bravely to the Mother Grouse, "we'll go for a safer place, my dear, and you follow us," he added to his children. With these words he rose, and the others followed so quickly that the six birds seemed to take wing together.

"Bang, bang, bang, bang," said the guns, and Father and Mother Grouse sank down into the heather that had been their home so long, with never a feather of their fine plumage ruffled. They were shot dead so cleanly that they knew no pain, and with them two of their children fell, not to die so easily. The white spot at the base of the beak of Father Grouse had a bright drop of blood on it, Mother Grouse did not even show as much.

"Mark down the others," cried the man who had shot the parent birds, and opened the season with a successful "right and left".

"Isn't worth while," said his friend who had shot one of the younger birds, "they are only cheepers."

Then the birds being retrieved, the party continued to shoot its way over the moor, meeting with fair success, for the wind kept the birds from hearing the approach, and they had fed so well during the fine weather that they were not at all wild. Twenty odd brace had gone to the bag by two o'clock.

The young cock grouse never knew how he got away, nor what became of his family. He heard the guns cracking at the back of him, the hissing of shot through the air, and he flew wildly until he felt he had reached safety, then sank down into the heather, not daring to stir. He heard the guns again; once the remnant of a broken covey passed over the heather where he crouched, but he did not move until feeding-time came, and then, after a brief meal, returned to shelter.

For the next two weeks the moor was quite unsafe, the four guns sounded every morning and afternoon; on one or another of the five beats the birds fell in all directions. One day the guns came upon the young grouse suddenly, when he had no idea of their proximity and, crouched in the heather, he remained quite still. It was a hot day, no breath of air stirred the leaves; the ground was hard as iron and there was no scent. A dog passed within a yard of him without betraying his presence; the gunners moved away to the right; he was safe.

He met single birds on the moor, and all told the same doleful tale of disaster, and when with the last day of the month the weather changed and the wind rose, word passed from bird to bird that it was time to pack. So he joined one or two others and they joined some more, and when they were fifty strong they joined another band as large, and their addition went on until the pack numbered hundreds if not thousands. This was not on the old moor where he had been born, but on another one not far away, where the guns had only stayed for a day or two before going on to the high forest lands some mile or more away in pursuit of the stags. The young grouse and his companions had become very keen of sight and hearing; they were alarmed by the least sound, and gunners who tried to walk after them never arrived within firing distance.

One afternoon when the pack was feeding, the young grouse came upon his friend the royal stag by the side of the burn that ran through the heart of the heather. The great beast had been wounded by an ill-aimed bullet and had found his way to the water alone, for his hinds had scattered. He lay crouched amid the moss and water grasses.

"I have been here for two days," he said to the grouse, "and if I'm left alone for two more I'll be healed of my wounds and I'll baffle the stalkers yet. They nearly tracked me, but had no dog, or I must have fought for it."

"We're staying here awhile," said the grouse, "and I'll do what I can for you in the way of warning."

The red grouse fed and rested in that quarter for several days, and the stag went back to the forest on the third evening. "I am well enough to go to sanctuary now," he said, "to the wood in the centre of the forest where the stalkers may not follow us. Good-bye, good luck, take care of the butts." So saying, he trotted off bravely, before the young grouse could ask what the butts might be.

He was not left long in doubt. On the morning following the stag's departure, he and his companions were alarmed to see a body of men armed with white flags approaching from the distance. With one accord the birds rose and went en masse in the direction indicated by the wind, right over some little banks of turf they had seen many times before on the moor. There were several of these banks on various moors, they were in a line, one being seventy yards or more from the other and were quite harmless as a rule.

This morning, however, as the birds passed over, the cry of the guns was heard, shot after shot was fired, bird after bird fell, for every little enclosure held one or two men. Some birds tried swerving, but it only carried them from one earth to another; it was a frightful experience and one that was destined to be repeated, for the birds followed the wind whenever they fled from the beaters and were caught again and again.

If the walkers had shot their tens, the drivers secured their hundreds in the next week or two, until the weather changed again for the worse and the packs took to a wilder and higher flight than they had ever attempted before. Then the gunners went off the moors and returned to the lower lands to shoot partridges.

To his last day the young grouse never knew how he survived the driving. The constant alarms, the headlong flights through the air, the hiss of the expanding shot that struck down near neighbours, these experiences filled him with a strange unreasoning fear, and he was not to escape scot free, for a couple of stray pellets cut off two of the toes of his left leg and another skinned the feathers above the left eye so that they never grew again.

On one occasion in his mad flight from the moor, he would have been killed against the telegraph wires of the Highland Railway, had not the singing of the "protectors" warned him just in time to dive below the wires. He felt little pain and inconvenience from his wounds and soon learned to go on short allowance of toes, but his fear increased until the least sound sent him into flight. Long after the moor had ceased to echo with the sound of guns, he trembled at every noise. The stags roared in the forest, and he fled in fear; a bird of prey screamed in the air--he dashed off again.

]

"Have no more fear," said the royal stag one day in later October, "the guns have gone for the year, the shooting season is over and I go about the forest as I like. Until my horns have fallen and grown again they will not return."

This assurance comforted the grouse and he changed his clothes for a black and buff combination that yielded in a little while to the splendid chestnut with white tipped lower feathers that he remembered his father wearing. He still travelled with the pack, but they ate less heather than they had eaten before, and depended more upon late autumn berries, grass and corn left on unploughed fields. He grew strong and indifferent to the storms that swept the moors and made the forest bare.

No sportsman came near, and at the end of December the pack separated, and our friend was left so near to his own moor that he lighted on it, and there he met a young lady grouse in her charming winter gown with its bars of red and buff and spots at the tips of the feathers. He asked her if she would fly with him, explaining that he had, he feared, lost his family and friends. She feared that hers was a similar plight and said she would be glad of a protector. So they went out together and found the scattered remains of their friends, and for two or three months enjoyed a pleasant courtship.

Then when the stale winter heather was about to yield to a new crop, one bird brought news of a district where all the old growth had been burnt by the proprietors of the land a few years earlier and the new shoots were plentiful and sweet. The grouse and his lady flew to that spot, and found a little unoccupied hollow under a heather tuft. He helped her to line it with grass and moss, and she filled it with ten eggs. It was now the end of March, and during the first part of April he stood on sentry duty a little way from the nest, and uttered his war cry in Gaelic as his father had done before him. Happily the weather was fine once more and ten little babies were his before April turned to May. He was a proud grouse on the day when the last bird had come from its shell.

Other birds had been carelessly content to nest in the old uneatable heather, or on parts of the moorland where the ground was damp and undrained; the mortality among them had been very great, for they caught pneumonia and other troubles which are peculiar to the grouse. But this grouse flourished, and so did his wife and family, and by rare good luck no birds of prey secured the little ones; the food supply did not fail, and the weather was never cold enough to kill the children in days when their down had not changed to feathers.

By this time all remembrance of the autumn had passed from the grouse and his wife. It was no more to them than a dream. They thought of nothing but love and domesticity. Spring, which had restored all its beauty to the Highland country, had effaced recollection of autumn and winter and all the woes they bore. Summer deepened the remembrance of the spring and the joy of life; as Mrs. Grouse remarked to her husband, there was not a pair on the moors that led a finer covey of little ones.

June passed in days that seemed to be twenty hours long, there was no night--only a prolonged twilight; July was so fine that the burns dwindled down to little threads, and the farmers on the lowlands were crying for the water of which in nine years out of ten they had too much. August found the heather full of fragrance and the grouse forward, and strong on the wing. "They are exactly like you, my dear," said Father Grouse to his wife, who had put on her summer dress with the irregular black bars across buff feathers, as they skimmed over the heather side by side. The parent birds were like her, very fat and very lazy, for the heather-tops had been young and plentiful in their part and they had rather overeaten themselves.

* * * * *

"That was a fine covey," said the first gun to his neighbour at ten o'clock on the morning of the 12th. "A dozen in all, and we got six. How odd; last year you bagged the leader with your first shot just as you've done now. What is it, Donald? Yes, that's odd, this old cock bird must have been hit twice last season. Two toes gone from left leg and mark of shot above left eye. Well, put them in. If we go on like this we will have a good bag."

THE ROEBUCK

With the beginning of June, full leaf came to the plantation, but never a human foot disturbed the fresh thick undergrowth, and save for the subdued note of birds the silence was complete. Above the woodland the pines towered along the side of rising ground that led to the more abrupt hills in whose corries the red deer were to be found; below the woodland the arable lands began, and stretched in rich and plenteous growth to the inhabited districts.

The corn was young and green, and the farmers had no work to do within its area. So the doe that had left her mate and the little party with which she travelled, in the third week of May, felt happily secure in the hiding-place she had chosen, a secluded spot amid thick bracken, and very early in June two little fawns were born to her. They were pretty babies with coats lighter than their mother's summer dress, and marked with white spots that did not remain very long. Their mother watched over them with most anxious and affectionate care, and until they were weaned could not bear them out of her sight for a moment. In the days of their utter helplessness she did not leave the wood at all, and the first walks abroad seemed to fill her with anxiety.

At the beginning of July, when the fawns were able to frisk about in prettiest fashion, happily ignorant of the element in life called danger, Donald's retriever pup, making a little journey of discovery, came quite by chance into the wood. It was quite a puppy, without any definite ideas of a proper function in life, and no desire to do more than play with strange animals, but the mother of the little ones was very frightened, and could not fathom its intentions. She called upon her babies to lie down in the thick fern, and then made her way to the puppy.

Had she possessed horns it might have gone ill with the intruder, as it was she managed to kick him very severely, and he fled from the wood howling. After this alarm the doe redoubled her precautions, and very often would stop feeding to stand with one fore-leg raised and listen intently to some sound coming from far away. Towards the end of the month the return of her errant husband lightened her anxieties.

The Roebuck came jauntily into the wood and offered no excuse or explanation for his two months' absence. He was quite a handsome fellow with about nine inches of antlers bearing the backward and forward tine that mark the complete development of what our forefathers called the "fair roebuck". From the shoulder he stood about two feet two inches, from nose to the end of his short tail he was about four feet long; his head was short, his eyes were large, and there were black and white markings on his lips. His coat was the light reddish-brown of summer, and his conspicuous white patch gave an effective contrast to it. He was very well pleased with the children his wife had brought him, and expressed his satisfaction in a series of short, sharp barks.

The family stayed in the wood for a brief time, living on grasses and ivy and the fresh growth of young trees, to which the fawns soon learned to help themselves, as they cared more for leaves than grass; but the pleasure of the season was quite spoilt by the flies. The wood was full of them, and they bit and worried the fawns until life became a burden.

"We must go up into the hills," said the Roebuck decisively; "it is our only chance of escape from this trouble. Midges can't climb so far."

"But what about the babies?" said the doe anxiously; "don't forget the great big stags with long horns that live up there."