80 DEER-STALKING. CH. XXV. 



of our neighbourhood too soon ; besides which he 

 had a troublesome habit of suddenly rising in the 

 most unaccountable manner from some unexpected 

 corner or hollow. We might examine long and 

 carefully the whole face of a hill, and having made 

 ourselves perfectly sure that nothing larger than a 

 mountain hare could be concealed on its surface, 

 up would rise the red stag from some trifling 

 hollow, or from behind some small hillock, and, 

 without looking to the right or left, off he would go 

 at his usual trot, till we lost him in the distance. 

 At another time, after we had beat, as we im- 

 agined, a whole wood, so that we were convinced that 

 neither deer nor roe could have been passed over, up 

 would get the stag out of some clump of larch or 

 birch, apparently scarcely big enough to hold a hare. 

 Or else he would rise at the very feet of one of the 

 beaters, and though not above a hundred yards 

 from the corner where I was posted he always 

 managed to turn back, perhaps almost running 

 over some man who had no gun : but he invariably 

 escaped being shot at, excepting on one occasion, 

 when I placed a friend who was with me near a 

 pass by which the stag sometimes left a favourite 

 wood. I had stationed the shooter at the distance of 

 half a mile from the wood, as the deer was always 

 most careful of himself, and most suspicious of 



