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CHAPTER XVII. 



AN UNEXPECTED MEETING WITH A STRANGER IN THE LAND NOISY STAGS 

 HOW THE VILLAGERS CATCH A BURGLAR A SERENADE COLD 

 QUARTERS TRACKING IN THE SNOW THE SHORT TWILIGHT FAILS 

 US WE LOSE OUR WOUNDED STAG A HUNTING MAXIM THE FOREST 

 MONARCH A CHARMED LIFE DOUBTFUL SATISFACTION LOST 

 TROPHIES ARE ALWAYS THE FINEST AN EXCITING BUT RATHER 

 " SHADY " WAY OF DOING BUSINESS A NIGHT VIGIL DEPRESSING 

 INFLUENCES SUPERSTITIOUS CREDULITY DEVIL TAKE THE HINDMOST 

 THE GOOJUR'S BLACK STAG AN INVASION OF RATS AND MICE HOW 

 WE CIRCUMVENTED THE BLACK STAG A GRAND SET OF HORNS FOUL 

 PLAY CASHMERE METHOD OF DRIVING A GORGE THE VALE UNDER 

 A DIFFERENT ASPECT MAKING A VIRTUE OF NECESSITY ACROSS THE 

 PIR PUNCHAL WHY " HANGUL " HAVE DECREASED IN NUMBERS. 



ALL Nature's charms looked more bright and beautiful when 

 the clouds cleared away after two or three days of almost 

 incessant rain, and we again took the hill. In the afternoon, 

 after a long ascent from the camp, we sat down to rest among 

 the brackens on a steep spur, and just outside a dense pine 

 forest that clothed its northern slope. Several stags were 

 bellowing away in a thickly wooded gorge far below. As we 

 sat there consulting as to how we should try to circumvent 

 one of them, a shaggy-looking animal suddenly bounced out 

 from the wood on to the open ridge, some 150 yards higher 

 up than where we were sitting, and after a few bounds down- 

 wards, again vanished into the wood. We were all quite 

 nonplussed as to what it could have been, for it certainly 

 was not a deer, and it had neither the gait nor the colour 



