HIS LAST LEAP. 



265 



and half his neck, but I aimed through the grass at his 

 chest, he turned back and was out of sight in an instant, but 

 the thud of the bullet was loud and unmistakable. I ran up 

 the slope but no stag was visible ; the ground below appeared 

 too precipitous for him to have gone straight back. At last 

 after a long search we discovered his track with quantities of 



' « - .. 





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. < & 



/J"^.**y\ Vr6, 



HIS LAST LEAP. 



blood. We followed it up and found he had gone at speed 

 over a perpendicular rock with a sheer drop of at least fifty 

 feet, but from the hill being so steep the distance he had 

 gone through the air before reaching the ground was a great 

 deal more ; we found him some hundred yards further down 

 firmly jammed in the middle of a small clump of bushes. I 

 fully expected that his antlers would have been smashed to 

 pieces, but they fortunately were quite uninjured, and very 

 fine ones they were with a grand spread of thirty-eight 

 inches and the same in length ; the beams very massive. 



