"Into such strange vagaries fell As he would dance,"
and tumbled down stone-dead into a loch. Now, what more could have done a detonator in the hands of the devil himself? Satan might have shot as well, perhaps, as Christopher North--better we defy him; and we cannot doubt that his detonator--given to him in a present, we believe, by Joe Manton--is a prime article--one of the best ever manufactured on the percussion system. But what more could he have done? When we had killed our fiftieth bird in style, we put it to the Christian reader, would not the odds have been six to four on the flint? And would not Satan, at the close of the match, ten birds behind perhaps, and with a bag shamefully rich in poor pouts, that would have fallen to the ground had he but thrown salt on their tails, have looked excessively sheepish? True, that in rain or snow the percussion-lock will act, from its detonating power, more correctly than the common flint-lock, which, begging its pardon, will then often not act at all; but that is its only advantage, and we confess a great one, especially in Scotland, where it is a libel on the country to say that it always rains, for it almost as often snows. However, spite of wind and weather, we are faithful to flint; nor shall any newfangled invention, howsoever ingenious, wean us from our First Love.
Let not youthful or middle-aged sportsmen--in whose veins the blood yet gallops, canters, or trots--despise us, Monsieur Vieillard, in whose veins the blood creeps like a wearied pedestrian at twilight hardly able to hobble into the wayside inn--for thus so long preferring the steel pen to the steel barrel (the style of both is equally polished)--our Bramah to our Manton. Those two wild young fellows, Tickler and the Admiral, whose united ages amount to little more than a century and a half, are already slaughtering their way along the mountain-side, the one on Buachaille Etive, and the other on the Black Mount. But we love not to commit murder long before meridian--"gentle lover of Nature" as we are; so, in spite of the scorn of the more passionate sportsman, we shall continue for an hour or two longer inditing, ever and anon lifting our eyes from whitey-brown paper to whitey-blue sky, from memorandum-book to mountain, from ink-bottle to loch, and delight ourselves, and perchance a few thousand others, by a waking-dream description of Glen-Etive.