88 LONDON BOOTS V. SCOTCH BROGUES. 



you will have no better chance with him than with his 

 companions. 



"Now tell me, my wayworn and much injured friend, 

 what made you shoot at that little deer ? " 



" A little deer ! a little deer ! hand credo I thought 

 he was an enormous monster." 



" I must reply as Master Dull, the constable, did to the 

 erudite Holofernes, ' 'Twas not a hand credo, 'twas a 

 pricket.' Extremely juvenile he is, I promise you ; but 

 you will soon distinguish better. It would have been a 

 dead loss to the forest to have slain him, for his flesh now 

 is worthless ; whereas, in two years more, he will be fine 

 venison. But I would have borne all the blame at the 

 castle, in requital for your good temper in not scolding 

 me for leaving you on the crags of Ben-y-venie. But 

 hinds and harts wait for no man ; and, moreover, I should 

 have given up a fair chance had I waited,, without con- 

 ferring any benefit upon you." 



"Ay, food for eagles I might have been. All fair, 

 all fair ; I undertook to follow you, and could not, 

 that's all ; and, to do you justice, you never looked be- 

 hind. ' You have a straight back, Hal, and care not who 

 sees it.' I am convinced that you have cloven feet, like 

 Pan, or that fellow with a worse name (whom, out of 

 deference to you, I forbear to mention), or you never 

 could have galloped down that fearful precipice like a 

 chamois. It made me giddy at once ; my head reeled, 

 and I was a lost man an absolute nonentity, wounded 

 and heart-broken." 



" And heartily glad am I that you are found again ; 

 without bruises, you intimate, I may not say, but with- 



