130 THE STILL-HUNTER. 



enough, of your head to take the alarm, how could 

 their whole bodies escape your eyes, especially when 

 that bit of brush was the first thing on which your 

 eyes rested when you came in sight of it at all ? It is 

 rather a puzzle, it is true; but its only solution is this: 

 a deer's eyes, when watching his back track, are as 

 keen to detect a motion in the woods as are those of 

 the wildest antelope on the plain. Some people who 

 had never hunted very wild deer would doubt this, 

 but as you have an hour or two now of time that is 

 not very precious I will show you how extremely true 

 it is. It will reduce your opinion of yourself consid- 

 erably below par, but it will reward you well in future, 

 and also give you a good idea of the general futility 

 of following upon the track of a deer that you have 

 started. 



Let us follow, then, the trail of these three and see 

 if we can again get sight of them. Do not try to get 

 a shot; be content with even a sight. Go right ahead 

 on the trail and look into the woods as far and as 

 keenly as you can. Nearly half a mile you follow 

 them, the long jumps still continuing. Here they 

 have skipped a high fallen log, and in three places 

 the snow is switched from it by their descending tails. 

 Here one has smashed through a bush, scattering snow 

 and dead branches around, and there another has 

 struck some boggy ground and splashed mud and 

 water around in fine style. But suddenly the jumps 

 slacken to a trot ; in a few yards that stops, and you 

 find where they have stopped and huddled up, one 

 standing sideways, the other two turning all the way 

 around. And then the long jumps begin again, still 

 longer now than before. 



And yet the ground is all quite open. They stopped 



