Nothing has any savour.’

The three men had been at school together, they had been contemporaries at the University, and close friends ever since. They had no secrets from each other. Leithen, into whose face and voice had come a remote hint of interest, gave a sketch of his own mood, and the diagnosis of the eminent consultant. Archie Roylance stared blankly from one to the other, as if some new thing had broken in upon his simple philosophy of life.

‘You fellows beat me,’ he cried. ‘Here you are, every one of you a swell of sorts, with everything to make you cheerful, and you’re grousin’ like a labour battalion! You should be jolly well ashamed of yourselves. It’s fairly temptin’ Providence. What you want is some hard exercise. Go and sweat ten hours a day on a steep hill, and you’ll get rid of these notions.’

‘My dear Archie,’ said Leithen, ‘your prescription is too crude. I used to be fond enough of sport, but I wouldn’t stir a foot to catch a sixty-pound salmon or kill a fourteen pointer. I don’t want to. I see no fun in it. I’m blasé. It’s too easy.’

‘Well, I’m dashed! You’re the worst spoiled chap I ever heard of and a nice example to democracy.’ Archie spoke as if his gods had been blasphemed.

‘Democracy, anyhow, is a good example to us. I know now why workmen strike sometimes and can’t give any reason. We’re on strike – against our privileges.’

Archie was not listening. ‘Too easy, you say?’ he repeated. ‘I call that pretty fair conceit. I’ve seen you miss birds often enough, old fellow.’

‘Nevertheless, it seems to me too easy. Everything has become too easy, both work and play.’

‘You can screw up the difficulty, you know. Try shootin’ with a twenty bore, or fishin’ for salmon with a nine-foot rod and a dry-fly cast.’

‘I don’t want to kill anything,’ said Palliser-Yeates. ‘I don’t see the fun of it.’

Archie was truly shocked. Then a light of reminiscence came into his eye. ‘You remind me of poor old Jim Tarras,’ he said thoughtfully.

There were no inquiries about Jim Tarras, so Archie volunteered further news.

‘You remember Jim? He had a little place somewhere in Moray, and spent most of his time shootin’ in East Africa. Poor chap, he went back there with Smuts in the war and perished of blackwater. Well, when his father died and he came home to settle down, he found it an uncommon dull job. So, to enliven it, he invented a new kind of sport. He knew all there was to be known about shikar, and from trampin’ about the Highlands he had a pretty accurate knowledge of the countryside. So he used to write to the owner of a deer forest and present his compliments, and beg to inform him that between certain dates he proposed to kill one of his stags. When he had killed it he undertook to deliver it to the owner, for he wasn’t a thief

‘I call that poaching on the grand scale,’ observed Palliser-Yeates.

‘Wasn’t it? Most of the fellows he wrote to accepted his challenge and told him to come and do his damnedest. Little Avington, I remember, turned on every man and boy about the place for three nights to watch the forest.