274 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



for the sake of the heads of bucks. I found two male deer, 

 bare bucks then, who would have been warrantable bucks now, 

 dead in the forest from rifle-balls, that had escaped wounded, to 

 perish, of no use to any one ; and, as to the buck I am speaking* 

 of, I saw the following mysterious fact happen. Druid had 

 found him in Wotton enclosure, while Mr. Lindsay was with 

 me. The woodman, Gulliver, saw him first, and reported him 

 to me to be either a bare buck or a year older, he could not 

 distinctly see which ; I saw him afterwards, and was perfectly 

 sure to the same extent, just as he reached the high road by the 

 turnpike near Holmesley enclosure, out of which road, after a few 

 strides, he gained the cover. Between the time when I saw him 

 over the road and his jumping into the cover, the fairies seemed 

 to have changed him into a doe, and they could not have been 

 three seconds about it ; to prove what I say, the keepers shot at 

 this deer, and asserted that in their eyes it was a doe. In July in 

 the succeeding summer, Mr. Boultbee and myself being together, 

 Druid found a buck in his second year of buckhood, but in his 

 sixth year from the time of his birth, about the same place 

 where he had found the buck metamorphosed by the fairies, and 

 after working him some time round the wood, Mr. Boultbee^s 

 horn signalled him away in the direction of the railroad, and 

 then he viewed him ahead of the hound over a railway bridge 

 into the heath near the keeper's lodge. Ahead of the buck was 

 a vast extent of high fern and gorse, where, after his work in 

 the wood we deemed it not unlikely that he would lie down, 

 so the thing to do was to "slot" him if possible to his lair, 

 previously stopping and taking up the hound. Luckily for us, 

 Druid checked by the side of the railway, and enabled us to 

 come up with him, and, getting on before, to catch him as he 

 crossed the bridge. This became the more necessary, as their 

 slots showed us that three lesser deer had passed the bridge the 

 same morning. We took up the track of the buck, and carried 

 it some distance along the paths in the heather, Mr. Boultbee 

 aiding in tracing it, till we came decidedly to where he had 

 struck off from the beaten path into the heath and fern. We 



