The next morning the rain kept us from making an early start, and we did not leave camp until eight. Now and then a drizzle fell from the mist, and the banks of clouds were still driving across the higher peaks, but during the day the sun slowly got the better of them. Again we saw a solitary goat, this time far below down the ridge we had chosen. Like the sheep, these animals watch the valley. There is no use in attempting to hunt them from there. Their eyes are watchful and keen, and the chances are that if you are working up from below and see a goat on the hill, he will have been looking at you for some time. Once he is alarmed, ten minutes will be enough for him to put a good many hours of climbing between himself and you. His favorite trick is to remain stock-still, watching you till you pass out of his sight behind something, and then he makes off so energetically that when you see him next he will be on some totally new mountain. But his intelligence does not seem to grasp more than the danger from below. While he is steadfastly on the alert against this, it apparently does not occur to him that anything can come down upon him. Consequently from above you may get very near before you are noticed. The chief difficulty is the noise of falling stones your descent is almost sure to make. The character of these mountain-sides is such that even with the greatest care in stepping we sent a shower rattling down from time to time. We had a viciously bad climb. We went down through tilted funnels of crag, avoiding jumping off places by crossing slides of brittle slate and shale, hailing a dead tree as an oasis. And then we lost count, and T---- came unexpectedly on the goat, which was up and away and was shot by T---- before I could get a sight of him. I had been behind some twenty yards, both of us supposing we had to go considerably further. T---- was highly disgusted. "To think of me managing such a botch as that," he said, "when you've come so far"; and he wanted me to tell the people that I had shot the goat myself. He really cared more than I did.
This goat was also a billy, and larger than the first. We sat skinning him where he had fallen at the edge of a grove of tamarack, and T---- conversed about the royal family of England. He remarked that he had always rather liked "that chap Lorne."