Three years weary patience was rewarded in the fourth year with a fine
grouse season, and, not being quite so thick upon the ground as in
ordinary good seasons, the grouse sat better, and in the second and
third weeks we made better bags than was customary.
Our lease was running out, this was the sixth season.
The factor did his best to induce us to renew for another seven years.
I was anxious to do so, notwithstanding our disappointments, but my
chum did not seem to care to do it, and I hardly liked to do so without
him, and very much I afterwards regretted it.
The factor had always used us well, in the best possible manner, he had
an old-fashioned notion that decent folks who paid a good round sum for
sport and gave no trouble, were entitled to consideration, and to have
something for their money; the modern factor quite discards ideas so
very ridiculous.
In the spring of this season I was down with my second son for some
trout fishing in the river, and we had some pleasant sport, being
favoured with two or three small rises of water and a good show of
March browns. We managed to make nice little baskets of 6lb. to 7lb.
each on most days, fishing the Beldornie water as well as our own.
We had, neither of us, ever seen a red deer--anyhow, on his native
heath--and we decided to make a day out to Glen Fiddoch Forest.
We knew that it was five miles across the Glenmarkie ground to the
extreme point of our outside march at Auchendown Castle, and how
much further we knew not. That, bear in mind, was before the days of
ordnance maps.
We were all good walkers, that is, David and myself, and my son Oliver;
he held a front place in athletics at Rugby School.
We crossed the moor south of Auchendown, and then got at last on to the
road track to Glen Fiddoch Lodge. Altogether, it was a long tramp, the
last few miles following up the Fiddoch burn, but time and labour at
last landed us at the lodge.
The lodge was very old-fashioned, was all on the ground floor, with
rooms on one side of a long building, and a passage on the other side.
The housekeeper was a civil old body: would give us some tea, which
we appreciated, and made much of us in every way; showed us the room
that had been used by the Queen the year before, when visiting the
Duke. Everything was simple in the extreme. I am sure that no broker
would have bid over eighteen pence for the washing stand in the Queen's
bedroom.
On our way we saw deer by scores on the hill sides, and also round the
lodge.
All was very pleasant up to now, but there was the walk back. By the
time we reached Auchendown we had had enough, and there was the five
miles across heavy moorland yet to be done. Some people say that your
native heath, and the springiness of the heather, make walking pleasant
and easy, but don't believe it; my notion has always been that one mile
of moorland is equal to two on the hard road.
David was fairly done. It is not the first time that I had walked down
the natives, both in Ireland and in Scotland, but I never expected to
see David brought to a stand.
Well, we laid down and rested a good hour, refreshed with biscuits and
whiskey and water, and put the five miles behind us before dark.