THE RED DEER. 29 



till in the end he is forced to take to his heels and 

 seek his fortune elsewhere. The hinds then follow 

 the victor not probably because they are moved 

 by any special sense of admiration, but because 

 they know very well that if they endeavour to 

 do anything else they will be gored and beaten 

 by their master till they acquire a becoming sense 

 of conformity to the rules. 



But for so long as the hart holds his harem, the 

 hinds are a source of unceasing anxiety and vigil- 

 ance. Every hart in the range is ready and 

 waiting to fight him for possession of them, and 

 the difficult task of retaining what he holds is 

 now his lot. He has no chance of resting, no 

 time even to eat. In the offing dallies a litter 

 of younger stags, who, between bouts with one 

 another, are ever ready to poach on his preserves. 

 He may encounter a larger stag already possessing 

 a harem outnumbering his own, in which case 

 all the wives are pooled, and the winner takes the 

 pool. 



The red deer is not essentially a beast of the 

 mountains. It is merely that the vast mountain 

 retreats are the last place of sanctuary in which 

 it has been able to retain its footing. Thus 

 the wild grandeur of the hills adds no little to 

 the romance of a romantic existence. Charles 

 St John describes how, when sleeping in the 

 mountains, he had heard stags roaring their chal- 

 lenge all round him, till the air of the glens 

 trembled with the majesty of the sound. 



Normally, red deer are silent beasts. Almost 

 the only sound they utter in communicating with 

 each other is a sharp bark, very closely resembling 

 the startled bark of a terrier. In this way they 

 give the alarm, and when a company is separated, 



