36 CHAMOIS HUNTING. 



majesty. Though retreating before some danger, there 

 is no ignoble haste or precipitancy in his flight. With 

 front erect and steady eye he moves over the ground, 

 seeming hardly to touch the earth, so lightly does 

 he step along ; and in his whole mien and bearing he 

 is " every inch a king." 



At the usual time he suddenly appears amid his old 

 haunts and his former loves. Until now a troop of 

 hinds only were to be seen by the hunter who watched 

 for them at morning or at evening, with the calves of 

 this, and the fawns of last year ; but now on the skirts 

 of the herd he sees or at first thinks he sees a pair 

 of branching antlers towering in the air ; and behold ! 

 the monarch is indeed returned. He has added another 

 embattlement to his crown since he was last seen ; in 

 stature too he is changed, and well indeed may he claim, 

 irrespective of his diadem, to be called " a royal hart." 

 But how different now his look from that time when 

 he disappeared in the wilderness ; like the prodigal, 

 who, with wasted strength and but a wreck of his 

 former self, skulks away that he may be seen by none. 

 How worn and broken down did he leave the scenes 

 of all his pleasures, and how vigorous and in what gal- 

 lant trim does he return ! Should a rival dare to loiter 

 about the spot, he goes forth to meet him, to do battle 

 for his rights ; to maintain them or be vanquished in 

 the encounter. No knight, burning to achieve a deed 

 of chivalry, ever charged down upon a foe with more 

 valiant daring than will he, when he sees approach- 

 ing the antlers of some new wooer tossing in the air 



