CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



Prey ! We trembled with a sort of fear, to behold him 

 lying indeed dead on the sward. The moon the many 

 stars, here and there one wondrously large and lus- 

 trous the hushed glittering loch the hills, though 

 somewhat dimmed, green all winter through, with 

 here and there a patch of snow on their summits in 

 the blue sky, on which lay a few fleecy clouds the 

 mighty foreign bird, whose plumage we had never 

 hoped to touch but in a dream, lying like the ghost 

 of something that ought not to have been destroyed 

 the scene was altogether such as made our wild 

 young heart quake, and almost repent of having 

 killed a creature so surpassingly beautiful. But that 

 was a fleeting fancy and over the wide moors we 

 went, like an American Indian laden with game, jour- 

 neying to his wigwam over the wilderness. As we 

 whitened towards the village in the light of morning, 

 the earlier labourers held up their hands in wonder 

 what and who we might be; and Fro, who had missed 

 his master, and was lying awake for him on the mount, 

 came bounding along, nor could refrain the bark of 

 delighted passion as his nose nuzzled in the soft down 

 of the bosom of the creature whom he remembered to 

 have sometimes seen floating too far off in the lake, 

 or far above our reach cleaving the firmament. 



[90] 



