298 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN. 



seeds on — I cannot say cultivates, a farm. The 

 fawn I reared from the forest was this year a grace- 

 ful doe ; she would come to my call, feed out of 

 my hand, and was the most graceful and innocent 

 pet imaginable. Unfortunately she formed an attach- 

 ment to an old Iceland pony, not much bigger than 

 herself, brought over jjy the late Lord Stuart De 

 Rothesay, and to this pony she paid a daily visit. 

 This led her occasionally down to the land rented 

 by the tallow-chandler I speak of, who immediately 

 loaded a gun for her destruction. The instant he 

 did so one of his labourers came privately to tell me 

 that my pet was in danger ; so, having nothing left 

 for it, as I had pi*eviously reported the deaths of fe- 

 vourite animals without redress, I confined her, in the 

 hope of inducing her to bear a chain and collar. In 

 vain : every wild forest feeling seemed to be awakened 

 at such thraldom, and, when I shut her up in a barn, 

 she became sad and suspicious, pining for the sweet 

 grass on the cliff and all her pretty playmates. I 

 could not bear to see her pine ; so, an application 

 being made to me for a tame deer for a lady, by 

 Herring, of the menagerie in the New Road, near 

 Fitzroy Square, I reluctantly made a crate in which 

 she could travel by train to London, and, with tears 

 in my eyes, saw her depart for the station in a 

 cart, eating the last mouthful of green grass that 

 " Rosie " will ever have from mv hand. Had I let 

 her loose, and the tallow-chandler had killed her, I 

 should have risked the commission of what Avould 

 really have been a justifiable homicide; so it was best 

 to let her go. May the lady, whoever she is, be a 

 kind mistress ; for in a few weeks more she will pos- 

 sess " the last of the New Forest deer." 



