“My dear fellow,” said Mr. Ogilvie, who did not refuse to have his tumbler replenished by the attentive Hamish, “it is quite the other way.  I consider myself precious lucky.  I consider the shooting firstrate; and it isn’t every fellow would deliberately hand the whole thing over to his friend, as you have been doing all day.  And I suppose bad weather is as bad elsewhere as it is here.”

Macleod was carelessly filling his pipe, and obviously thinking of something very different.

“Man, Ogilvie,” he said, in a burst of confidence, “I never knew before how fearfully lonely a life we lead here.  If we were out on one of the Treshanish Islands, with nothing round us but skarts and gulls, we could scarcely be lonelier.  And I have been thinking all the morning what this must look like to you.”

He glanced round—­at the sombre browns and greens of the solitary moorland, at the black rocks jutting out here and there from the scant grass, at the silent and gloomy hills and the overhanging clouds.

“I have been thinking of the beautiful places we saw in London, and the crowds of people, the constant change, and amusement, and life.  And I shouldn’t wonder if you packed up your traps to-morrow morning and fled.”

“My dear boy,” observed Mr. Ogilvie, confidently, “you are giving me credit for a vast amount of sentiment.  I haven’t got it.  I don’t know what it is.  But I know when I am jolly well off.  I know when I am in good quarters, with good shooting, and with a good sort of chap to go about with.  As for London—­bah!  I rather think you got your eyes dazzled for a minute, Macleod.  You weren’t long enough there to find it out.  And wouldn’t you get precious tired of big dinners, and garden-parties, and all that stuff, after a time?  Macleod, do you mean to tell me you ever saw anything at Lady Beauregard’s as fine as that?”

And he pointed to a goodly show of birds, with a hare or two, that Sandy had taken out of the bag, so as to count them.

“Of course,” said this wise young man, “there is one case in which that London life is all very well.  If a man is awful spoons on a girl, then, of course, he can trot after her from house to house, and walk his feet off in the Park.  I remember a fellow saying a very clever thing about the reasons that took a man into society.  What was it, now?  Let me see.  It was either to look out for a wife, or—­or——­”

Mr. Ogilvie was trying to recollect the epigram and to light a wax match at the same time, and he failed in both.

“Well,” said he, “I won’t spoil it; but don’t you believe that any one you met in London wouldn’t be precious glad to change places with us at this moment?”

Any one?  What was the situation?  Pouring rain, leaden skies, the gloomy solitude of the high moors, the sound of roaring waters.  And here they were crouching under a stone wall, with their dripping fingers lighting match after match for their damp pipes, with not a few midges in the moist and clammy air, and with a faint halo of steam plainly arising from the leather of their boots.  When Fionaghal the Fair Stranger came from over the blue seas to her new home, was this the picture of Highland life that was presented to her?