DEER-STEALERS DETECTED 269 



me on into and through the gorse at times, more by the 

 motion he gave it than any sight I had of him, till I came up to 

 him, standing joyfully on guard over the body of the recaptured 

 deer. We were then not far from the village, and I knew that 

 whoever it was that had been obliged to abandon the load was 

 safe enough housed by that time. 



Having reached a conspicuous place on the hill, whence to 

 signal my man, he came up, having begun to follow me as soon 

 as he guessed what I was after, and, giving him possession of 

 the deer, I returned to the railway, entered a cottage on the 

 line to see if any man was there, and, finding that the owner of 

 the cottage near which Tramp's chase had passed was one of 

 the plate-layers I had before observed at work, I took to the 

 rails, followed by Tramp, Thor, and my terriers, as I knew no 

 train was due, and proceeded by that unusual route directly for 

 the three labourers. In nearing them I observed that, instead 

 of looking up to stare at the unwonted trespass, each man 

 became so busy with his pickaxe that one would have supposed 

 they had been working for a wager, so, casting the guns to the 

 left arm, I came right upon them, touched one man on the 

 shoulder, collared the second, and told the third I arrested 

 them all as having taken part in a robbery. You might have 

 knocked them all down with a feather, so taken aback were 

 they. I turned up the smock of one who had his on to see if 

 there was any blood about him, but none was to be seen, and a 

 glance at their feet showed me that every shoe was a larger one 

 than mine ; so, however conversant they might have been with 

 the robbery, none of the three had carried the deer. They 

 protested their innocence, and I asserted my belief of their 

 guilty participation, because they were in full view of the spot 

 whence the deer had been stolen and where she had been borne 

 across the line; so I quitted them, with an assurance that I 

 would that day apply to the inspectors of the line for their 

 discharge unless they cleared themselves by stating all they 

 knew of the transaction. 



On reaching home I directly sent for a vigilant constable of 



