“Ah,” said he to the splendid red deer, which was walking about the paddock with his velvety horns held proudly in the air, “what part of the Highlands have you come from?  And wouldn’t you like now a canter down the dry bed of a stream on the side of Ben-an-Sloich?”

The hind, with slow and gentle step, and with her nut-brown hide shining in the sun, came up to the bars, and regarded him with those large, clear, gray-green eyes—­so different from the soft dark eyes of the roe—­that had long eyelashes on the upper lid.  He rubbed her nose.

“And wouldn’t you rather be up on the heather, munching the young grass and drinking out of the burn?”

They went along to the great cage of the sea-eagles.  The birds seemed to pay no heed to what was passing immediately around them.  Ever and anon they jerked their heads into an attitude of attention, and the golden brown eye with its contracted pupil and stern upper lid, seemed to be throwing a keen glance over the immeasurable leagues of sea.

“Poor old chap!” he said to one perched high on an old stump, “wouldn’t you like to have one sniff of a sea-breeze, and a look round for a sea-pyot or two?  What do they give you here—­dead fish, I suppose?”

The eagle raised its great wings and slowly flapped them once or twice, while it uttered a succession of shrill yawps.

“Oh yes,” he said, “you could make yourself heard above the sound of the waves.  And I think if any of the boys were after your eggs or your young ones, you could make short work of them with those big wings.  Or would you like to have a battle-royal with a seal, and try whether you could pilot the seal in to the shore, or whether the seal would drag you and your fixed claws down to the bottom and drown you?”

There was a solitary kittiwake in a cage devoted to sea-birds, nearly all of which were foreigners.

“You poor little kittiwake,” said he, “this is a sad place for you to be in.  I think you would rather be out at Ru-Treshanish, even if it was blowing hard, and there was rain about.  There was a dead whale came ashore there about a month ago; that would have been something like a feast for you.”

“Why,” said he, to his human companion, “if I had only known before!  Whenever there was an hour or two with nothing to do, here was plenty of occupation.  But I must not keep you too long, Miss White.  I could remain here days and weeks.”

“You will not go without looking in at the serpents,” said she, with a slight smile.

He hesitated for a second.

“No,” said he; “I think I will not go in to see them.”

“But you must,” said she, cruelly.  “You will see they are not such terrible creatures when they are shut up in glass boxes.”

He suffered himself to be led along to the reptile house; but he was silent.  He entered the last of the three.  He stood in the middle of the room, and looked around him in rather a strange way.