Whats Mines Mine, vol 2 | Page 7

head, was rigidly
respected. As to the parts which became the property of others-the
boundaries between were not very definite, and sale could ill change
habits, especially where owners were but beginning to bestir
themselves about the deer, or any of the wild animals called game.
Hector and Rob led their life with untroubled conscience and easy
mind.
In a world of the devil, where the justification of existence lay in
money on the one side, and work for money on the other, there could
be no justification of the existence of these men; but this world does
not belong to the devil, though it may often seem as if it did, and father
and son lived and enjoyed life, as in a manner so to a decree
unintelligible to him who, without his money and its consolations,
would know himself in the hell he has not yet recog- nized. Neither of
them could read or write; neither of them had a penny laid by for wet
weather; neither of them would leave any memory beyond their
generation; the will of neither would be laid up in Doctors' Commons;
neither of the two would leave on record a single fact concerning one of
the animals whose ways and habits they knew better than any other
man in the highlands; that they were nothing, and worth nothing to
anybody--even to themselves, would have been the judgment of most
strangers concerning them; but God knew what a life of unspeakable
pleasures it was that he had given them-a life the change from which to
the life beyond, would scarce be distracting: neither would find himself
much out of doors when he died. To Bob of the Angels tow could
Abraham's bosom feel strange, accustomed to lie night after night,

star-melted and soft-breathing, or snow-ghastly and howling, with his
head on--the bosom of Hector of the Stags-an Abraham who could as
ill do without his Isaac, as his Isaac without him!
The father trusted his son's hearing as implicitly as his own sight. When
he saw a certain look come on his face, he would drop on the instant,
and crouch as still as if he had ears and knew what noise was, watching
Kob's face for news of some sound wandering through the vast of the
night.
It seemed at times, however, as if either he was not quite deaf, or he
had some gift that went toward compensation. To all motion about him
he was sensitive as no other man. I am afraid to say from how far off
the solid earth would convey to him the vibration of a stag's footstep.
Bob sometimes thought his cheek must feel the wind of a sound to
which his ear was irresponsive. Beyond a doubt he was occasionally
aware of the proximity of an animal, and knew what animal it was, of
which Rob had no intimation. His being, corporeal and spiritual,
seemed, to the ceaseless vibrations of the great globe, a very
seismograph. Often would he make his sign to Kob to lay his ear on the
ground and listen, when no indication had reached the latter. I suspect
the exceptional development in him of some sense rudimentary in us
all.
He had the keenest eyes in Glenruadh, and was a dead shot. Even the
chief was not his equal. Yet he never stalked a deer, never killed
anything, for mere sport. I am not certain he never had, but for Rob of
the Angels, he had the deep-rooted feeling of his chief in regard to the
animals. What they wanted for food, they would kill; but it was not
much they needed, for seldom can two men have lived on less, and they
had positively not a greed of any kind between them. If their necessity
was meal or potatoes, they would carry grouse or hares down the glen,
or arrange with some farmer's wife, perhaps Mrs. Macruadh herself, for
the haunches of a doe; but they never killed from pleasure in killing. Of
creatures destructive to game they killed enough to do far more than
make up for all the game they took; and for the skins of ermine and
stoat and fox and otter they could always get money's worth; money
itself they never sought or had. If the little birds be regarded as earning
the fruit and seed they devour by the grubs and slugs they destroy, then
Hector of the Stags and Rob of the Angels also thoroughly earned their

food.
When a trustworthy messenger was wanted, and Rob was within reach,
he was sure to be employed. But not even then were his father and he
quite parted. Hector would shoulder his gun, and follow in the track of
his fleet-footed son till he met him returning.
For