They got into the train; and away through the darkness of the November afternoon they rattled to Three Bridges; but all the eager sportsman had gone out of him, and he had next to nothing to say in answer to the major’s excited questions.  Occasionally he would rouse himself from this reverie, and he would talk in a perfunctory sort of fashion about the immediate business of a moment.  He confessed that he had a certain theoretical repugnance to a battue, if it were at all like what people in the newspapers declared it to be.  On the other hand, he could not well understand—­judging by his experiences in the highlands—­how the shooting of driven birds could be so marvellously easy; and he was not quite, sure that the writers he had referred to had had many opportunities of practising, or even observing, so very expensive an amusement.  Major Stuart, for his part, freely admitted that he had no scruples whatever.  Shooting birds, he roundly declared, was shooting birds, whether you shot two or two score.  And he demurely hinted that, if he had his choice, he would rather shoot the two score.

“Mind you, Stuart,” Macleod said, “if we are posted anywhere near each other—­mind you shoot at any bird that comes my way.  I should like you to make a big bag that you may talk about in Mull; and I really don’t care about it.”

And this was the man whom Miss Carry had described as being nothing but a slayer of wild animals and a preserver of beasts’ skins!  Perhaps, in that imaginary duel between Nature and Art, the enemy was not so thoroughly beaten and thrown aside, after all.

So they got to Three Bridges, and there they found the carriage awaiting them; and presently they were whirling away along the dark roads, with the lamps shining alternately on a line of hedge or on a long stretch of ivied brick wall.  And at last they passed a lodge gate, and drove through a great and silent park; and finally, rattling over the gravel, drew up in front of some gray steps and a blaze of light coming from the wide-open doors.  Under Lord Beauregard’s guidance, they went into the drawing-room, and found a number of people idly chatting there, or reading by the subdued light of the various lamps on the small tables.  There was a good deal of talk about the weather.  Macleod, vaguely conscious that these people were only strangers, and that the one heart that was thinking of him was now far away, paid but little heed; if he had been told that the barometer predicted fifteen thunder-storms for the morrow, he would have been neither startled nor dismayed.

But he managed to say to his host, aside:—­

“Beauregard, look here.  I suppose, in this sort of shooting, you have some little understanding with your head-keeper about the posts—­who is to be a bit favored, you know.  Well, I wish you would ask him to look after my friend Stuart.  He can leave me out altogether, if he likes.”

“My dear fellow, there will be scarcely any difference; but I will look after your friend myself.  I suppose you have no guns with you?”