Stalking the Stag 209 



and as his body passes through the air the tail extends 

 behind and droops so that he seems to form an arch. After 

 working along ten or fifteen yards in one direction, he 

 stops, turns sharp round, and comes all the way back again. 

 Some distance farther, under the trees, two more are 

 frisking about, and a rabbit, has come to nibble the grass 

 in the open. 



Looking across to the other side, where the fern re- 

 commences, surely there was a movement as if a branch 

 was shaken ; and a branch that, on second thought, is in 

 such a position that it cannot be connected with any tree. 

 Again, and then the head and neck of a stag are lifted 

 above the fern. He is attacking a tree rubbing his antlers 

 against a low branch, much as if he were fighting it. He 

 is not a hundred yards off; it would be easy to get nearer, 

 surely, by stalking him carefully, gliding from tree-trunk 

 to tree-trunk under the beeches. 



At the first step the squirrel darts to the nearest beech ; 

 and although it seems to have no boughs or projections 

 low down, he is up it in a moment, going round the trunk 

 in a spiral. A startling clatter resounds overhead : it is a 

 wood-pigeon that had come quietly and settled on a tree 

 close by, without being noticed, and now rises in great 

 alarm. But it is a sound to which the deer are so accus- 

 tomed that they take no notice. There is little underwood 

 here beneath the beeches, but the beechmast lies thick, 

 and there are dead branches, which if stepped on will crack 

 loudly. 



A weasel rushes past almost under foot ; he has been 

 following his prey so intently as not to have observed 

 where he was going. He utters a strange startled ' yap,' 

 or something between that and the noise usually made by 

 the lips to encourage a horse, and makes all speed into 



P 



