As it was Saturday, and I was anxious to spend the following day at home before returning to business in London early on the Monday morning, I left the boat, and several other passengers followed my example; amongst them my twice-shipwrecked friend, and the little man who had striven so strenuously and vainly to assume the appearance of courage. As the first trahi did not start south until six o'clock and all the hotel keepers were locked in slumber, we went into the night porter's room at the railway

station, where there was a good fire, and sat round in sombre meditation. Our little friend feeling sleepy, stretched himself face downwards on a huge table with his field-glasses for a pillow. He snored magnificently for the space of twenty minutes, and then startled us by jumping up as if he had been shot and yelling out, " We've been on the rocks I we've been on the rocks!

Not recognising either of his late shipmates, he began to tell us a tale of his adventures and hairbreadth escapes, that went far towards eclipsing the ujDS and downs of Robinson Crusoe, and made me long madly after the godlike gift of picturesque exaggeration.

CHAPTER IV.

GAMEKEEPERS : THEIR FRIENDS AND FOES.

our travels in search of materials forDURING camera and notebook we have naturally fallen in with many gamekeepers and learnt a great deal about their friends and enemies, and it is my intention to give in the present chapter some account of what we have heard and seen whilst wandering about on great game preserves in all parts of the country.

Gamekeepers as a class are shrewd, practical fellows, with an intense belief in what they know from experience, and an extreme contempt for anything in the nature of book-learning about the life of the fields, woods, and moors.

I have surprised many of them, who would in-listen to my bird stories with good-natured credulity, by proving a practical knowledge of the ways of vermin and the best methods of stopping their ravages; and one at least attests the value of my advice in regard to destroying common Brown Rats. He was telling me what trouble these artful depredators gave him, and of their cunning in avoiding his traps. I said, "You should place your steel gins in that water" (pointing to a shallow creek crossed by a rat-track running along the side of a small lake) "if you want to catch them."

He adopted the advice, and with so much success that he afterwards tokl a friend of niine, who happened to cross his path, that whether I knew an}'thing about birds or not I had certainly tauii'ht him one of the best ways of catching rats that he " had ever tried or heard tell of."

At one place in the Hebrides, where we stayed for a few days, we became on very good terms with a gamekeeper who was much troubled by several pairs of Peregrine Falcons that were, with the help of Grolden Eagles and other birds of prey, committing sad havoc amongst the Grouse breeding on his beat. We accompanied him one day on a long journey, which he undertook in order to try to shoot a female Peregrine as she flew from her eyrie, situated in a horizontal fissure running for a yard or two along the face of a gigantic precipice. cliff, and when theWe climbed to the foot of the keeper had sufficiently regained his breath to enable him to take aim with tolerable certainty I made a noise to disturb the sitting bird, but in vain, she would not stir a feather. Thereupon our friend drew one of his "wire" cartridges, and putting in a smokeless ordinary, straightway fired. The Falcon instantly darted out, and before the reverberations of his first shot had commenced to kiss the rocks across the loch at our feet the keeper had dispatched his second message of lead heavenwards in ])ursuit of the fleeing bird. But the distance was too great to permit of any damage being done, and after flying round and round high overhead for a little while uttering her wailing alarm note " KcJc, kclc^ kck, AWr," the Peregrine came down, l^oldly alighted on a jutting crag, and watched us cahnly from her coign of vantage some three hundred feet above.

HIGHLAND GAMEKEEPER AND SOIVIE OF HIS TROPHIES.

The cliff could not have been less than four hundred feet in height, and as the eyrie was situated midway betwixt its base and summit the bird was practically out of gunshot, whether approached from the top or bottom.

After we left, the gamekeeper thinking that by the exercise of a little patience he could destroy the eggs, kept the parent lairds off the nest for six consecutive hours, but to no purpose, for the faithful Peregrines ultimately brought off their young ones in safety. is A strange peculiarity of many l3ird8 of prey their unconquerable love for an old breeding haunt. If the female is killed the male flies away, and often returns in an incredibly short space of time with another mate. Amongst other interesting things which our friend told us about Peregrine Falcons was an instance of two male birds living in perfect harmony with one female. It came about in this way. He had shot a female from her eyrie in a cleft of rock, and placing a trap for the male, discovered a day or two afterwards that he had been in it and taken his departure minus a leg. In a little while this legless bird returned with a male and female, and they all three occupied the old nesting-quarters in the utmost peace. The same gamekeeper also told us that he had seen one of these l)irds strike the head clean off a Grouse whilst in full flight by one blow of its powerful wing. In the spring of 1890 my brother returned to this part of Scotland in the hope of getting a photograph of a Golden l%agl(i sitting on her eggs, but found it inq)ossible to do so on account of the bird's exceeding shyness, and the fact that he could

ADDER BASKING.

not command a view of the eyrie from any point at which he could use his telephoto lens.

One day, whilst out with an (jld game-watcher, he espied an Adder basking" in the sunshine close to the path along which they were walking. His companion waxed so loudly eloquent about his j^rowess in having slain a reptile of the same species a few days before that he was asked to speak low lest the Adder should hear him and be off before he could photograph it. This heathenish admission of io-norance was most unfortunate, and stirred poor Sandy's theological sentiments to their pro-foundest depths. Affecting a great air of surprise he puffed in his beard, and with a fine mixture of scorn and sorrow exclaimed—" Och, mon, did ye niver read the Scriptures? Talk of an Adder having the naturalhearing ye, indeed! "—doubtless history of the fourth and fifth verses of the forty-eifflith Psalm in his mind: "The deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; which will not hearken to the voice of the charmer, charming never so wisely."

The foregoing picture of the reptile was made before it was added to a long list of victims in our friend's mental calendar of destruction.

On the occasion of this second visit a pair of Peregrine Falcons were breeding at the far end of the beat, eleven miles away across the mountains; and as the gamekeeper and his watcher were going to pay the place a A^sit in order to try to shoot the depredators, my brother volunteered to accompany them on their (expedition. Accordingly they all started out at three o'clock one fine morning for the scene of action. When they arrived at the cliff they discovered that the female would not be driven from her charge by any noise they could make by hand-clapping

or slioutino;-, so it was arranged that the watcher should frighten lier off by firing his gun. This was done, and she instantly fluttered out. Bang bang! bang! went three shots, and away flew the Falcon fatally wounded, according to the verdict of lier would-be slayers. They now descended to a cottage some little distance below, and waited to see whether the male bird would turn up to take his share of the labours of incubation. In a little while he flew into the eyrie, and the keepers crept stealthily towards the place. As soon as they arrived at a satisfactory point one of them cried out, and their chance came. Four barrels were emptied in a skyward direction, but despite this liberal expenditure of lead the Peregrine sailed away, apparently none the worse.

Both birds subsequently returned to the eyrie as full of life and mischief as when they left it.

The Merlin, or " Stone Falcon," as it is called in some parts of the country, is the smallest and pluckiest winged enemy the moorland gamekeeper has to contend with. It breeds in the deep heather and preys upon young Grouse and small birds, which are plucked on little " knowes " at some distance from the nest, round which there is hardly a feather to be seen. Last summer we were shown a nest on the Westmorland hills containing four eggs, and succeeded in inducing the farmer, on whose property it was situated, to spare them and the young ones, which were subsequently hatched, and of which we made a photograj^h.

I have canvassed the opinions of many intelligent gamekeepers of wide experience upon the vexed question of killing hawks and owls, and although my sympathies are with the birds, I must admit that their arguments in defence of their action

is, so far as they are concerned, unanswerable. are poor men hired expressly to pre-TheJ say "We serve game for those who love the sport of shooting, and as game and vermin don't tln-ive together we are obliged to look after the sm-vival of the most profitahle." "I have no particular ill-will towards the birds you name," said one old fellow, "but is it likely that I can allow my own sentiment, or that of other folks whom I do not even know, to rob my wife and children of their bread-and-butter?"

Another said: "Now, look here, sir, people talk a lot of nonsense about the innocence of the Kestrel, which is really as bad a hawk as flies. 1 have known one keep on harrying my young Pheasants until he had carried off twenty-four, which would have been worth something like a pound a-piece to at. Hemy 'guv'nor' if they had lived to be shot was so artful that I could never get within shot of him. I have seen the rascal stoop and pick up a chick, and when I have fired my gun off drop it affain from fear. In some cases the little creature would run back to its foster-mother in a coop, apparently none the worse for the adventure, but in others the bird would die from its injuries."

Other keepers have told us similar woeful tales about the Kestrel's depredations. It is shot as it leaves its nest, and occasionally trapped.

One day, whilst walking alongside a dry wall dividing a newly- })lanted copse from some grazing land in the Highlands of Scotland, we noticed a luuiimock of freshly-piled stones which excited our curiosity. Upon (examining it, we discovered a vermin trap and the hind leg of a Mountain Hare inside it. On repassing the same place an hour or two afterwards, we were much uinus(Ml l)y a young

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