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all the hounds in his most notable pictures are 

 portraits. He decorated the walls of Lord Henry 

 Bentinck's lodge of Ardverikie with stalking scenes, 

 and the loss was irreparable to artists and sports- 

 men when it was burned down. And he illustrated 

 Scrope's ^' Deerstalking " with stalking sketches. 

 Scrope, who was the most famous stalker of his 

 day, had the range of the vast forest of Athol, where 

 the hounds could be slipped with impunity. There 

 were deer and to spare, and the boundaries were 

 wide. He gives the most thrilling account of those 

 chases : the wounded hart is a knowing strategist, 

 and always faces his pursuers in the least approach- 

 able position. He will turn to bay in some torrent, 

 with a rock at his back, and a cataract or the swift 

 rush of deep water before him. And he can use 

 his horns with the flexibility of a skilled fencer's 

 wrist : they rip like the tusks of a wild boar, but 

 the wounds are said to be more deadly. As an 

 old rhyme has it — 



" If thou art wounded by a hart, it brings thee to thy bier ; 

 But boar's wound will barber heal " — 



for the barbers in old times practised surgery. 

 Scrope's best story tells of his favourite dogs, 

 on slippery rocks, forgetting the extreme danger 

 in their excitement, when each sweep of the stag's 

 horns sent them back, with their hind legs on 

 the verge of an abyss. No wonder that there 

 was a tremor in his hand when he fired the shot 

 that saved them. But the most famous of all 



