SPRING RAMBLES 55 



keepers' dogs had not long since found him out ? 

 Was he a victim " that from the poacher's hand 

 had ta'en a hurt," and then, lost by him, had 

 found a last refuge on this distant hill ? Had 

 Jie died from some poisonous weed or wicked 

 reptile ? He was not a poor starved thing, exiled 

 intentionally from the herd : he was fat and well 

 liking. I am sure it is a case where an apt quota- 

 tion from As You Like It may be admissible. 

 Shakespeare's deer, it will be remembered, had 

 come to languish "under an oak, whose antique 

 root peeps out upon the brook that brawls along 

 this wood." Mine had fallen on the hill-top, far 

 away from any brook ; but then you may be sure 

 that there, as the melancholy Jacques bemoaned, 

 he 



" . . . . heaved forth such groans 

 That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat 

 Almost to bursting, and the big round tears 

 Coursed one another down his innocent nose 

 In piteous chase. 



". . . . then being there alone, 

 Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends : 

 ' 'Tis right,' quoth he '. ' thus misery doth part 

 The flux of company.' Anon a careless herd, 

 Full of the pasture, jumps along by him 

 And never stays to greet him. 'Ay,' quoth Jacques, 

 ' Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens ; 

 'Tis just the fashion : wherefore do you look 

 Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there ? ' " 



I left the poor stricken deer as I found him. Dead, 

 he was, but how he came by his death is a mystery 

 I had no time to inquire into. 



