I've been told ye're great huntsmen in the Highlands; if ye choose to turn red deer yourself, I'll give ye a chase, _and trade ye down, man, and track ye down_." MacLean half turned from the window.

"I have hunted the red deer," he said, "in the land where I was born, and which I shall see no more, and I have been myself hunted in the land where I shall die.

I have run until I have fallen, and I have felt the teeth of the dogs.

Were God to send a miracle--which he will not do--and I were to go back to the glen and the crag and the deep birch woods, I suppose that I would hunt again, would drive the stag to bay, holloing to my hounds, and thinking the sound of the horns sweet music in my ears.

It is the way of the earth.