SLOT OF A KED DEER. 341 



" What is Druid jumping at, Sir?" 1 had just time 

 to say, " He's a deer before him," when, in two or 

 three more jumps over the low tangled bushes tlie 

 hound roared, and up sprang two docs. They were 

 out of sight in an instant ; but directly after Druid 

 brought them round, and I killed them left and right, 

 as fine dry does as a man need look at at this season 

 of the year. The next thing we found was a fawn, 

 which I shot at but did not kill; when, having changed 

 from the fawn, we took a deer away into the open 

 forest, and after a great deal of cold hunting I got 

 a shot at a doe — alas ! she was a wet one — and 

 killed her. Whether the fawn that I shot at had 

 joined its mother, and then couched, the hound con- 

 tinuing on the line of the doe, I cannot tell : I tried 

 to find and recover the fawn, but in vain. While on 

 the traces of these deer, like Robinson Crusoe, when 

 he saw the print of a human foot on the desert shore, 

 I was startled with the slot of a red deer, and I was 

 in doubt, as the impression was very fiiint, whether of 

 a hart or hind, though I was inclined to believe that 

 it was the slot of the former.* Rumour says, and 

 the keepers say, " there is but one red deer left in the 

 forest, and that is a hind ;" but, for all this, from the 

 single impression I saw, I have my doubts ; and though 

 I am not prepared, against all the above authority, to 

 assert that there is a stag, I should not be surprised 

 to see, besides the hind, a male red deer. It was a 

 single impression where the deer had placed a foot in 

 jumping a bank, and made in dry crumbling dust; so 

 that though I could swear to the slot, it did not afibrd 

 me much personal or venison information. 



* It was afterwards proved that there were two or three stags left in 

 the forest. 



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