But fortunately a nine-o'clock dinner had driven this foolish
entertainment late, so that it did not last long; the ladies were
unanimously willing to retire; the gentlemen thereupon trooped off to
the gun-room to have a smoke and a glass of whiskey and soda water; and
very soon thereafter the deep-breathing calm of the whole household told
that the labors of the Twelfth were over.
CHAPTER IX.
VENATOR IMMEMOR.
And why was it, when, in course of time, it became practicable to
arrange a deer-stalking expedition for him, why was it that he
voluntarily chose to encounter what Lord Rockminster had called the very
extremes of fatigue and human misery? He knew that he was about to
undergo tortures of anxiety and privation; and, what was worse, he knew
he was going to miss. He had saturated his mind with gillies' stories of
capital shots who had completely lost their nerve on first catching
sight of a stag. The "buck-ague" was already upon him. Not for him was
there waiting away in these wilds some Muckle Hart of Ben More to gain a
deathless fame from his rifle-bullet. He was about to half-kill himself
with the labors of a long and arduous expedition, and at the end of it
he foresaw himself returning home defeated, dejected, in the deepest
throes of mortification and chagrin.
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