"Pretty well," said he, stretching out his legs, and petting his pretty
mustache with his beautiful white hand. Then he added, suddenly,
surveying the brown-faced and stalwart young fellow before him, "By
Jove, Macleod, I'm glad to see you in London. It's like a breath of
mountain air. Don't I remember the awful mornings we've had
together--the rain and the mist and the creeping through the bogs? I
believe you did your best to kill me. If I hadn't had the constitution
of a horse, I should have been killed."

"I should say your big drinks at Aldershot were more likely to kill you
than going after the deer," said Macleod, "And will you come up with me
this autumn, Ogilvie? The mother will be glad to see you, and Janet,
too; though we haven't got any fine young ladies for you to make love
to, unless you go up to Fort William, or Fort George, or Inverness. And
I was all over the moors before I came away; and if there is anything
like good weather, we shall have plenty of birds this year, for I never
saw before such a big average of eggs in the nests."

"I wonder you don't let part of that shooting," said young Ogilvie, who
knew well of the straitened circumstances of the Macleods of Dare.

"The mother won't have it done," said Macleod, quite simply, "for she
thinks it keeps me at home. But a young man cannot always stay at home.
It is very good for you, Ogilvie, that you have brothers."

"Yes, if I had been the eldest of them," said Mr. Ogilvie. "It is a
capital thing to have younger brothers; it isn't half so pleasant when
you are the younger brother."