ANTLER AND FERN. 67 



those presented by the Master. Few pairs 

 thus put together are good, and some very 

 inferior. Somehow or other the stags, and 

 those that bear good heads especially, have 

 a way of dropping their antlers in the most 

 unlikely places. Leaves that have fallen from 

 the beech trees and hedges are blown along 

 by the spring gales and cover them, dead ferns 

 droop over, and their colour is but little dif- 

 ferent from the grey grass and dead branches. 

 Or the heather conceals the horn, and it is pos- 

 sible to walk right over it without seeing it. 

 An ardent forester who was racing on 

 foot after the hounds, the pack being in 

 full cry, caught his foot in descending a 

 coombe-side, and rolled some distance. He 

 supposed it was a furze stem, or a tree root, 

 but on rising he chanced to look at his foot, 

 and found it firmly fixed in a stag's antler. 

 He had trod, as he ran, right between the two 

 points on top, which threw him like a trap, 

 and over he went carrying the horn with 

 him in his descent. So well had the antler 



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