180

Dyneley is poor for a peer, though rich compared to such fellows as Willoughby, who has not money enough to keep his horses. Dyneley's governor went deucedly fast, and spent every shilling the entail would let him lay his hand upon. To be a rich peer, is decidedly a very jolly birthright; but a poor one-I would as soon be one of the grooms about the Yard. Dyneley thought so too; so, after he had gone fast also, he shut up his place in Hampshire to retrench by itself, sold the town-house, took his yacht Aphrodite and wandered over the face of the earth, seeing life in all its possible phases, firing a book or two now and then at the world, getting a reputation for cleverness and eccentricity (everything is called eccentric that is at all out of the beaten track), and at five-and-thirty came back from his travels to be admired by some, cavilled at by others, likened by young ladies to Lara and Manfred, and to be fêté as a singular mélange of Gordon Cumming, Lamartine, and Layard.

He was, however, utterly unlike any of the three, as it happened.

"Well, Monti, are all your traps ready?" said he, when I went to see him one morning at Maurigy's, where he had been staying ever since he and the Aphrodite had come home. He was swinging himself in a rocking-chair, smoking a hookah he had brought from Cairo, his stag-hound Mousquetaire lying at his feet. Willoughby chanced to be breakfasting with him, and was lying full length on a sofa. He used to be nicknamed Bella in his troop, for he has all the beauty of his mother, who made a great row when she came out, but ended by marrying for love upon nothing, which aërial inheritance she bequeathed to poor Claude, with her soft almond eyes and fair hair. He is a tall, broad-chested fellow, but Dyneley, swinging there in his rocking-chair, though not so big, beats him hollow in sinew and power; and his face, with its haughty, pale, refined features, and dark eyes that can soften and flash wonderfully when they are moved, has a greater charm for women than even Claude's, though he is called the Crusher, from his merciless slaughter of the pretty game-game which he kills as I have shot parrots in India, to leave where they fell. "If you are ready," continued Dyneley, "I think we may as well start. Vere tells me he never shot over better ground. There's a salmon river, plenty of snipe in the moss, and Fitzcorrie's forest joins the moor. I know him intimately; he'll let us kill some stags, to say nothing of the outlying ones. Shall we travel all night? May as well."

"For Heaven's sake, Dyneley, no!" cried Willoughby, with more energy than he often threw into things. "It's all very well for you fellows, with your muscles of iron, that that clever chap in " Guy Livingstone" writes so much about, to talk in that barbarous style. You, who've worn sheepskins with Bedouins, and crossed the Fjord with Laps, may find fun in such monstrosities, but I never tire myself if I can help it; and as to cramping my legs by travelling all night, I'll be shot if I do it, not if you offer me half a million at my journey's end."

"Haven't half a million to offer," said Dyneley, setting down some cold game to Mousquetaire. "It's exactly the sum I want myself, and when I find it I'll open Vauxley, and take my seat in the Lords. But I shouldn't have thought you such a lazy dog, Claude, last February three years, when you pogged that tiger at Darjeeling."

"That?" said Claude. ment, and the brute turned up. No! I'm a very lazy man. "Oh! that was nothing. I wanted amuseAs I'm a

poor devil, I must stick in the Cavalry till I'm providentially shot in some

scrimmage; but if I were rich, I'd live among roses and myrtles in Arabia Felix, with a harem and a hookah, lots of sherbet, and some Nautch girls, and never stir all day."

"I tried that once when I was in the East," said Dyneley, "and got intensely bored after a little while; and so would you. Sofa cushions, narghilé, and alme, made me keenly feel the truth of " toujours perdrix." I thought the girls delightful at first, but for a continuance one wants something besides ankles and almond eyes. They never open their lips for any better purpose than to show their white teeth, and you know I've a weakness for brains."

"Do you find yourself any better served in that commodity by English belles than by Turkish bayadères? I don't."

"No!" said Dyneley, after a long pull at his hookah; "women are women all the world over. Whether the question is rouge or betel-nut, rings on the fingers or rings through the nose, women are born, live, and die solely for the toilette.' Last March, when I was staying down at Fairlie's, I noticed, one wet day, that his wife and Fanny Villiers, being thrown on their own resources, talked on for five consecutive hours, without stopping, of-DRESS; how splendidly somebody was got up on her presentation, how badly somebody else was dressed at the Handel concert, what one woman's diamonds possibly cost, how little, they knew for certainty, another had given for her Honiton, consoling themselves with the hope that dear Adelaide's' pearls were paste, pulling their friends to pieces, cheapening this and envying that, till, by George! it really made me sad to think with what bitter truth our mothers, and sisters, and wives, and daughters might write on their lily-white brows, Rubbish

shot here!'

"Their heads ain't more empty than their hearts are icicles," muttered Claude, stroking his silky chesnut moustache. "I've flirted, I dare say, as much as most men, but, as Dick Swiveller says, I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure to marry a market-gardener.' A girl who was mad about me when she was skating in a black hat and a red petticoat at Christmas, I was certain to see the season after selling herself at St. George's in Mechlin and orange-flowers."

"My dear fellow, you're not singular," laughed Dyneley. "I remember having very tender meetings in orange-groves as poetical as you could wish with a handsome Granadine, who vowed her heart would break when we parted, there not being room for her in the yacht. Twelve months after, touching at Frangerola, I went to see after my doña, feeling a friendly interest in her; lo! she'd married a lean old alcalde a fortnight after my departure;-and beautiful Venetians, whom I left inconsolable, I was certain to find provided with my substitute when I and the Aphrodite called there again. But about starting to-morrow; we may as well go at once. Curtis and Romer won't come down till the 20th. If you like to sleep in Glasgow, Claude, do. I shall push on; I hate dawdling when I'm once en route. What of that new dog of yours, Monti, do you think he'll stand the heather? Pointers can't often. My kennel's in first-rate condition. You've never seen Mousquetaire pull down a stag. Empress is second best, and Eros and Royal are good working dogs."

We talked on, as hard as a lot of girls talking over a wedding, of the respective merits of Enfield and Purdey, rifle powders and cartridges,

spoons, governors, and flies, and all the thousand necessaries of the moors, comparing notes of the royals we had stalked and the salmon we had played, with many a reminiscence of a good day's sport wound up with a haunch of roe or grilled blackcock, and washed down with steaming tumblers of Farintosh or foaming pints of Prestonpans.

Start we did the next morning, and slept at Glasgow, too, for Dyneley, though he is given to making out that he is a profound egotist, generally gives up his own wishes to other people's. We went on to Greenock early the next morning, and steamed up Loch Fine to Inverary, where Steinberg's head-keeper was waiting for us with a dog-cart and some other traps to take us on the twenty miles to Glenmist.

"Delicious! isn't it?" said Dyneley, looking down into a trout stream as he drove along through the mist, smoking vigorously. "Don't you long to be flinging a fly in there?"

"De-licious! well, I don't know," murmured Claude, wringing the wet from his long moustaches, "people's tastes differ. I can't say myself that I ever thought being as moist as an otter or a Scarborough boatman was any peculiar state of blessedness, but it may be one lives and learns."

"'Pon my life, Claude, to hear you talk, if I hadn't seen you pigsticking up in Scinde, I should think deserved you your name of Bella,' you indolent dog," said Dyneley, whipping up the mare. "So I do," drawled Claude. "There's not a handsomer man in the Service. All the women will tell you that."

"And almond-paste and kalydor are all you think about, I suppose ?" "My dear fellow, I don't use anything so common. I've a private recipe for cosmetique that I wouldn't suffer out of my hands for half Barclay's, bad as I want tin. I wouldn't mind letting you have a little; it'll keep the sun from bronzing you."

"Don't be such a fool," laughed Dyneley. "Bah! if I thought a girl used either cosmetique or rouge, I wouldn't kiss her now if she were as beautiful as Omphale. Omphale. Would you?"

"Can't say what I mightn't do under temptation," said Claude, piously. "I'm afraid I haven't always forsworn actresses and danseuses. Have you? And, as my sister Julia paints, I've had to kiss rouge through a sense of duty sometimes."

"Julia must be over thirty; she's only a year younger than

I remember ?"

you, if

"No, poor thing! She's flirted from Dublin to Devonport, and from Canada to Calcutta, all to no purpose. She can't even hook a Cornet."

"She must be very stupid, then," said Dyneley. "Between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two I can distinctly remember being engaged to eight different women-all bonâ fide affairs, too-rings, and hair, and all the rest of it. Boys always take to old women, too; the sort of women from whom, in after years, they'd flee to the uttermost ends of the earth. In my opinion, there ought to be a law to prevent young fellows committing themselves. The sylph in white muslin that they adore when they're one-and-twenty, they find when they're one-and-thirty to be a common-place, and, alas! too often, fat or red-nosed lady, who looks old enough to be their mother, and who, if they've the misfortune to be tied to her, clings round their neck like a brickbat round a drowning dog's."

"Bravo, Dyneley! You're positively speaking philosophy and truth, two combinations rarely seen on this earth," said I. "Are those the motives that have kept you from matrimony hitherto ?"

"I? No. I shall marry for money if ever I do-sell myself to the highest bidder, to keep up the title. That's what you'll end in too, Claude, eh ?"

“No,” answered Willoughby, sharply, for a wonder. "I shall never marry at all."

"Quite wise, if you can live without it. Here's the lodge; snug little place, isn't it? I wish poor old Steinberg were here to welcome us. I dare say we shall find some grilled grouse waiting for us. Steinberg always tells Alister to shoot some a few days before the 12th."

The grilled grouse was waiting for us, and a good fire too, for the mist made it a chilly night. Alister (the head-keeper) gave us good accounts of the moor. The broods of grouse were large; there were plenty of home-bred snipe in the moss and fowl in the pools, and salmon, and jack, and trout in the river. Fitzcorrie was expected daily down at Glengrouse, and one or two outlying stags had been seen on our moor. Altogether, there was good sport in prospect; and when we had done dinner, and sat round the fire in Steinberg's cozy fauteuils, smoking Cavendish and drinking toddy, and listening to the witty, graphic, satiric sketches with which Dyneley can, when he chooses, delight a mess-table, charm a drawing-room, and even amuse a club-room, we felt as contented and comfortable as any three men could, and rejoiced exceedingly at having escaped drums, crushes, concerts, manoeuvring chaperones, and inveigling belles, to enjoy ourselves on the moors, in the dear, free, sans gêne bachelor life.

II.

WE BAG BLACKCOCK AND MARK BELLES.

"EXTRAORDINARY what a deal one can do under pressure," said Willoughby, when we were discussing. Loch Fine herrings and a lot of other Highland delicacies at six o'clock the following morning. "I never in my life breakfast before twelve up in town or in barracks, except on Derby Day, and then every one makes an effort, and sacrifices his natural term of rest. My cousin, little Flo, and her mother came to see me the other day at Knightsbridge at two o'clock, after their luncheon, dear primitive things! I wasn't up; and I wrote her word I was very sorry for her disappointment, but I didn't know it was her habit to call upon people in the middle of the night."

"You're keener on the hills, old chap, or you wouldn't make a very heavy bag," laughed Dyneley. "You're a prize specimen, Claude, of the militaire noble--all dolce, bouquet, and ennui at home, all pluck, and game, and true as steel when you're marking birds in the open, or Caffres in a skirmish."

Claude bowed down to his plate at the compliment. "Well, you know when one's blood is up one likes to polish off the devils handsomely; if I've any very great impetus I don't so much mind tiring myself.'

"There's an impetus strong enough for any man. Come along,"

said Dyneley, springing up, and going to the window, through which we saw a whole crowd of keepers, gillies, pointers, retrievers, terriers, stag-hounds, setters, the old white pony in the midst of them, with cold black game, sandwiches, Bass and whisky on his back, for our luncheon when we'd shot up to the falls. By Jove, such sport as we had that day was worth twenty guineas an hour! I'm sure, to look calmly at a future time, when one will get out of condition, and the gun will begin to feel heavy, and gout will make one hobble over the heather, and asthma force one to puff and blow, requires more philosophy than all the old Greeks put together could have mustered if they'd ever known the pleasures of the moors. Talk of Socrates smiling at the hemlock, and Seneca inspecting the chopping up of his own veins! they are nothing to contemplating the days when, tied to one's arm-chair, we shall recal the corries and the glens as joys that are no more for us. had splendid sport that day; there was a Highland mist (that in Hyde Park, or among the English turnips, we should have thought a heavy shower); a pull up a hill of some eight hundred feet; rocks sharp as needles to scramble over, and deep burns to wade through, and underwood as thick as jhow jungle, but we never had primer fun in our lives ; and Claude-lazy dog, as he'd make himself out-enjoyed himself more, wet, stiff, and dead-beat in the moss, and marshes, and brushwood of Glenmist, than he would have been in the most luxurious spot you could put him in.

We

He and I made very good use of our time, and knocked down grouse and the black game, besides snipe, teal, and a few hares, right and left. But Dyneley took the shine out of us. Alister looked on at him with as much delight as that canny Scotchman could ever be stirred into; and, 'pon my honour, he does handle a gun beautifully. To be sure, he's had such practice as few men have, and the East and the West could tell you many a tale of his deeds, camping out in the Punjab jungles and the primeval woods, and I dare say a better shot than he was never seen on the moors; he does it all so coolly and yet so untiringly, too, putting no end of energy into it, yet never half as fagged as other men are.

The mist had cleared off, and the sun come out, by the time we reached the falls, and found the old pony, the plaids, and the Bass, and stretched ourselves on the heather to have a pipe and enjoy our luncheon.

Well, this is pleasant, decidedly, but I doubt if it's philosophic," said Willoughby, taking a pull at the mountain dew, "when one looks upon it in a serious light. I doubt if three sensible men, all over thirty, coming four hundred miles on purpose to fatigue, exhaust, and take it out of themselves in every possible way, for the express purpose of putting some shot into unhappy birds, or crawling through bush and briar, after the manner of the serpent, that was more subtle than any beast of the field-I doubt if, taken philosophically, there is not something” "Hang philosophy!" laughed Dyneley. "What's in Plato, Lucullus, Swedenborg, Kant, Whewell, Stuart Mill, that will do a man half the good, body and mind, that a good day on the hills does? You know I've read pretty well as much as most fellows, though I don't go in for a classic, and when I get my half million, one of the first things I look after at Vauxley will be the library; but I do say, that a man who knows how to handle his rifle and his rod is worth fifty of your regular bookworms.

I