such a morning as that is the walking; for the plunging kneedeep through the foaming burns and the staggering about as you toil up over the slippery heather roots are apt to tell severely on the back sinews. As for the sport, in the circumstances, the less said about that the better; the old birds are as wild as hawks, and even the young broods are nervously restless; but what else can you expect while the waters are draining off and the weather is clearing up? Damp it may be, below and around, but the air is exhilarating as dry champagne. You stick to the low beats, and come home in high spirits.

Should the weather 'hold up,' as the gillies say, in a day or two you have a change with a vengeance. You like sunshine, you say, and towards luncheon-time you have almost enough of it. For sultry closeness commend us to the depths of a highland glen, locked in upon all sides by beetling hills. The very sheep are too listless to feed, and lie languidly chewing the cud in the shadows of the rocks. The panting setters are puzzling on a scentless quest among the ferns and rushes that skirt the burn. On the upper grounds they have plunged their muzzles eagerly into each shrunken puddle, and you felt strongly tempted to follow the example. They tell us now that there is nothing like cold tea to walk upon, and that merely moistening the lips is more efficacious than swallowing. It may be so, but we are oldfashioned enough to prefer spring water cold as snow, when you have swept aside the covering of duckweed, qualified with a dash of Lochnagar or Glenlivat. We doubt if the slight stimulus spoils the shooting, and you should have time enough to recruit for any consequences before you turn out again. But we have no doubt whatever of the propriety of a moderate luncheon, with due regard to the afternoon work and the dinner. The little group by the burnside or the bubbling spring, with the gillies seated within speaking distance, the dogs already gone hunting in dreamland, the contents of the scanty bag displayed to careless advantage on the greensward, would be a peaceful study to inspire the sympathetic genius of a Landseer. Then the subsequent siesta when you sink back on the bed of heather, when the pipe drops from the yawing mouth, and the drowsy eyes fail to distinguish whether it is lark or raven that is floating against the cloudless azure, and next the awakening, with the warning that it is time to move on, for every earthly pleasure must have an end. Then there is the day when it is blowing half a gale, when you follow the birds to the more sheltered beats, though the winds twist and turn so perversely in the corries that it is hard to

say when the dogs may run them up or where shelter may be found. When you top the crests the views are preternaturally clear, and you look away down heathery vistas over emerald straths to the woods and the cornfields of the far-away lowlands. Most picturesque of all, perhaps, is it when the hills are shrouded in floating veils, fitfully lifting or thinning, when the guns and their attendants are veritably children of the mist. Very perplexing is a dense Highland fog, and it may puzzle the most experienced hillman. But in any case, should he have altogether lost his bearings, he can seek a rivulet flowing in the right direction, and follow it down to the lower levels. Sometimes the mist will come up with a suddenness altogether inexplicable. We have been shooting on a sunny day, with every promise of the continuance of the beautiful weather. The atmosphere over a half of the heavens has darkened with startling rapidity. We have seen the wall of mist travelling up like the mysterious pillar of cloud that guided the tribes in the wilderness. We have shot a grouse and have run forward to pick it up, lest we should have had to grope for the bird in utter darkness.

Not the least of the pleasures of the season's grouse-shooting is in anticipation. The keepers have been forwarding reports, which generally are rather inclined to be rose-coloured. Sometimes, indeed, they are bound for their own reputation's sake to paint the outlook in the blackest hues. The deadly epidemic has been abroad, and the hillsides, and more especially the burnsides, are strewed with bleaching skeletons. The Old Deer-stalker,' whose knowledge and experience were unrivalled, used to say that it made periodical visits every five years, passing regularly from north to south, though with greater or lesser severity. Be that as it may, like the visitations of the Indian cholera, which cuts a clear road through a cantonment, the grouse disease goes on a sharply defined trail. When death has been busy on one side of a strath, the other has shown no signs of infection. As the scent of the sleuth-hound is baffled by the flow of water, the plagueangel seemed to be stayed at the passage of some stream. But fortunately the depressing announcements of a virulent pestilence are rare. From the platforms at Euston or King's Cross forward the sportsman is hoping and believing the best. In peaceful slumbers in the bed he can now hire for five shillings he has pleasant dreams. If the man from West London is wise, for many reasons he will go North several days before the Twelfth. Even to the young and robust, dinners, crushes, or late parliamentary sittings, are indifferent training for long days on the moors. And for

mere pleasure's sake it is a pity to miss those preliminary surveys of the ground which help to get him into condition. Anticipation comes to its climax on the eleventh, and you are bound to walk off the excitement. The watchers have come in with the latest news-we should be sorry to say that they enter for a competition of mendacity; the head-keeper is full of bustle and selfimportance; and as for the dogs, they know better than anybody that grouse-shooting opens on the morning of the Twelfth. They are jumping off and on to their couches, and dancing clamorously up against the prison bars. If the kennels are close to the lodge, the chorus of melody is deafening. Those dogs are taking it out of themselves tremendously, but it cannot possibly be helped.

We know that old sportsmen maintain-perhaps they are gouty, and certainly they are growing lazy-that it is a grave mistake to make an early start. Perhaps, and theoretically, they are in the right. But, in the first place, if a crack shot wishes to make a record bag, it is clear that, if his range is unlimited, the longer he labours the more he will do. In the second, even if the muscles should be failing towards midday, there is no time so delightfully exhilarating as the freshness of dawning day. Moreover, even if you meet with indifferent luck, you are breaking and scattering the broods you may drop into in the afternoon. As matter of fact, we have had capital sport in the early morning, when the scent was lying, and the coveys as well. But the mere tale of the birds you bag should be a very secondary consideration. You are breathing laughing gas-a pure Highland elixir-absorbing it at every pore. You feel as if you were being wound up to walk on for ever, and are only impatient to get to business. But it has been arranged that you start homewards, and the beat begins six long hill miles from the lodge. The ponies plod forwards and upwards, for you have prudently spared your legs, though you long to be striding through the heather. The grouse are there in plenty: there can be no question of that. Possibly, however, you may have to reconsider those first pleasing impressions. Now a well-grown covey goes fluttering across the track, and the old cocks, who seem to know that you are harmless so far, crow challenges from the knolls within easy gunshot. But all waiting must have an end, and the time has come when you are to take your revenge.

There are few more exhilarating moments in the memory than the first throw-off on a fine Twelfth. The dogs slipped from the couples, after the repressed impetuosity that has been fretting them to fiddlestrings, break away on a mad range as if they