This, it must be understood, was just from the fringe of
plantations about the house, but this was all we meant to do to-day,
making only a morning of it, since our ladies had expressly desired
first lessons in the art of angling in the afternoon, so that they too
could be busy. Excellently too had Sandie worked the beat, leaving us
now, after going, as he said, all round, a couple of hundred yards only
from the house, at a few minutes to two. So, after a little private signalling from Jim to me, he spoke to
Sandie, dropping the hare-question altogether. “Well, the beat has gone excellently,” he said, “and this afternoon
we’ll be fishing. Please settle with the beaters every evening, and tell
me what you have paid out. Good morning to you all.”

We walked back to the house, but the moment we had turned a hum of
confabulation began behind us, and, looking back, I saw Sandie and all
the beaters in close whispering conclave. Then Jim spoke. “More in your line than mine,” he said; “I prefer shooting a hare to
routing out some cock-and-bull story as to why I shouldn’t. What does it
all mean?”

I mentioned what I had found in Elwes last night. “Then do they think it was we who killed the old lady on the road, and
that I was going to kill somebody else this morning?” he asked. “How
does one know that they won’t say that rabbits are their aunts, and
woodcock their uncles, and grouse their children? I never heard such
rot, and to-morrow we’ll have a hare drive. Blow the grouse! We’ll
settle this hare-question first.”

Jim by this time was in the frame of mind typical of the English when
their rights are threatened. He had the shooting of Achnaleish, on which
were hares, sir, hares. And if he chose to shoot hares, neither papal
bull nor royal charter could stop him. “Then there’ll be a row,” said I, and Jim sniffed scornfully. At lunch Sandie’s remark about the “sickness,” which I had forgotten
till that moment, was explained. “Fancy that horrible influenza getting here,” said Madge. “Mabel and I
went down to the village this morning, and, oh, Ted, you can get all
sorts of things, from mackintoshes to peppermints, at the most heavenly
shop, and there was a child there looking awfully ill and feverish. So
we inquired: it was the ‘sickness’--that was all they knew. But, from
what the woman said, it’s clearly influenza. Sudden fever, and all the
rest of it.”

“Bad type?” I asked. “Yes; there have been several deaths already among the old people from
pneumonia following it.”

Now, I hope that as an Englishman I too have a notion of my rights, and
attempt anyhow to enforce them, as a general rule, if they are wantonly
threatened. But if a mad bull wishes to prevent my going across a
certain field, I do not insist on my rights, but go round instead, since
I see no reasonable hope of convincing the bull that according to the
constitution of my country I may walk in this field unmolested. And that
afternoon, as Madge and I drifted about the loch, while I was not
employed in disentangling her flies from each other or her hair or my
coat, I pondered over our position with regard to the hares and men of
Achnaleish, and thought that the question of the bull and the field
represented our standpoint pretty accurately. Jim _had_ the shooting of
Achnaleish, and that undoubtedly included the right to shoot hares: so
too he might have the right to walk over a field in which was a mad
bull. But it seemed to me not more futile to argue with the bull than to
hope to convince these folk of Achnaleish that the hares were--as was
assuredly the case--only hares, and not the embodiments of their
friends and relations. For that, beyond all doubt, was their belief, and
it would take, not half an hour’s talk, but perhaps a couple of
generations of education to kill that belief, or even to reduce it to
the level of a superstition. At present it was no superstition--the
terror and incredulous horror on Sandie’s face when Jim raised his gun
to fire at the hare told me that--it was a belief as sober and
commonplace as our own belief that the hares were not incarnations of
living folk in Achnaleish. Also, virulent influenza was raging in the
place, and Jim proposed to have a hare-drive to-morrow! What would
happen? That evening Jim raved about it in the smoking-room. “But, good gracious, man, what can they _do_?” he cried. “What’s the use
of an old gaffer from Achnaleish saying I’ve shot his grand-daughter
and, when he is asked to produce the corpse, telling the jury that we’ve
eaten it, but that he has got the skin as evidence? What skin? A
hare-skin! Oh, folk-lore is all very well in its way, a nice subject for
discussion when topics are scarce, but don’t tell me it can enter into
practical life. What can they do?”

“They can shoot us,” I remarked. “The canny, God-fearing Scotchmen shoot us for shooting hares?” he
asked. “Well, it’s a possibility. However, I don’t think you’ll have much of a
hare-drive in any case.”

“Why not?”

“Because you won’t get a single native beater, and you won’t get a
keeper to come either. You’ll have to go with Buxton and your man.”

“Then I’ll discharge Sandie,” snapped Jim. “That would be a pity: he knows his work.”

Jim got up. “Well, his work to-morrow will be to drive hares for you and me,” said
Jim. “Or do you funk?”

“I funk,” I replied. The scene next morning was extremely short. Jim and I went out before
breakfast, and found Sandie at the back door, silent and respectful. In
the yard were a dozen young Highlanders, who had beaten for us the day
before. “Morning, Sandie,” said Jim shortly. “We’ll drive hares to-day. We ought
to get a lot in those narrow gorges up above. Get a dozen beaters more,
can you?”

“There will be na hare-drive here,” said Sandie quietly. “I have given you your orders,” said Jim. Sandie turned to the group of beaters outside and spoke half a dozen
words in Gaelic. Next moment the yard was empty, and they were all
running down the hillside towards Achnaleish. One stood on the skyline a
moment, waving his arms, making some signal, as I supposed, to the
village below. Then Sandie turned again. “An’ whaur are your beaters, sir?” he asked. For the moment I was afraid Jim was going to strike him. But he
controlled himself. “You are discharged,” he said. The hare-drive, therefore, since there were neither beaters nor
keeper--Maclaren, the head-keeper, having been given this “day-off” to
bury his mother--was clearly out of the question, and Jim, still
blustering rather, but a good bit taken aback at the sudden disciplined
defection of the beaters, was in betting humour that they would all
return by to-morrow morning. Meanwhile the post which should have
arrived before now had not come, though Mabel from her bedroom window
had seen the post-cart on its way up the drive a quarter of an hour ago. At that a sudden idea struck me, and I ran to the edge of the hog’s back
on which the house was set.