"Bless me! have you not learned that yet!" asked the doctor, in
affected surprise, as he sauntered out of his bedroom to relight his
pipe.

The various bedrooms in the clerks' house were ranged round the hall,
having doors that opened directly into it, so that conversation
carried on in a loud voice was heard in all the rooms at once, and
was not infrequently sustained in elevated tones from different
apartments, when the occupants were lounging, as they often did of an
evening, in their beds.

"No," said Hamilton, in reply to the doctor's question, "I have not
learned yet, although there were a great many grouse in the part of
Scotland where I was brought up. But my aunt, with whom I lived, was
so fearful of my shooting either myself or someone else, and had such
an aversion to firearms, that I determined to make her mind easy, by
promising that I would never use them so long as I remained under her
roof."

"Quite right; very dutiful and proper," said the doctor, with a
grave, patronising air.

"Perhaps you'll fall in with more _fox_ tracks of the same sort as
the one you gave chase to this morning," shouted the skipper, from
Wilson's room.

"Oh! there's hundreds of them out there," said the accountant; "so
let's off at once."

The trio now proceeded to equip themselves for the walk. Their