Jim usually worked at night, you see. One or two curmudgeons talked of the police and prosecutin’ him, but public opinion was against them – too dashed unsportin’.’

‘Did he always get his stag?’ Leithen asked.

‘In-var-i-ably, and got it off the ground and delivered it to the owner, for that was the rule of the game. Sometimes he had a precious near squeak, and Avington, who was going off his head at the time, tried to pot him – shot a gillie in the leg too. But Jim always won out. I should think he was the best shikari God ever made.’

‘Is that true, Archie?’ Lamancha’s voice had a magisterial tone.

‘True – as – true. I know all about it, for Wattie Lithgow, who was Jim’s man, is with me now. He and his wife keep house for me at Crask. Jim never took but the one man with him, and that was Wattie, and he made him just about as cunning an old dodger as himself.’

Leithen yawned. ‘What sort of a place is Crask?’ he inquired.

‘Tiny little place. No fishin’ except some hill lochs and only rough shootin’. I take it for the birds. Most marvellous nestin’ ground in Britain barrin’ some of the Outer Islands. I don’t know why it should be, but it is. Something to do with the Gulf Stream, maybe. Anyhow, I’ve got the greenshank breedin’ regularly and the red-throated diver, and half a dozen rare duck. It’s a marvellous stoppin’ place in spring too, for birds goin’ north.’

‘Are you much there?’

‘Generally in April, and always from the middle of August till the middle of October. You see, it’s about the only place I know where you can do exactly as you like. The house is stuck away up on a long slope of moor, and you see the road for a mile from the windows, so you’ve plently of time to take to the hills if anybody comes to worry you. I roost there with old Sime, my butler, and the two Lithgows, and put up a pal now and then who likes the life. It’s the jolliest bit of the year for me.’

‘Have you any neighbours?’

‘Heaps, but they don’t trouble me much. Crask’s the earthenware pot among the brazen vessels – mighty hard to get to and nothing to see when you get there. So the brazen vessels keep to themselves.’

Lamancha went to a shelf of books above a writing-table and returned with an atlas. ‘Who are your brazen vessels?’ he asked.

‘Well, my brassiest is old Claybody at Haripol – that’s four miles off across the hill.’

‘Bit of a swine, isn’t he?’ said Leithen.

‘Oh, no. He’s rather a good old bird himself. Don’t care so much for his family. Then there’s Glenraden t’other side of the Larrig’ – he indicated a point on the map which Lamancha was studying – ‘with a real old Highland grandee living in it – Alastair Raden – commanded the Scots Guards, I believe, in the year One. Family as old as the Flood and very poor, but just manage to hang on. He’s the last Raden that will live there, but that doesn’t matter so much as he has no son – only a brace of daughters. Then, of course, there’s the show place, Strathlarrig – horrible great house as large as a factory, but wonderful fine salmon-fishin’. Some Americans have got it this year – Boston or Philadelphia, I don’t remember which – very rich and said to be rather high-brow.