SHOOTING. 



heather, he takes a cool aim. His victim shot 

 through the heart leaps in the air and dies. The 

 rest of the herd bound away ; a ball from another 

 barrel follows, the " smack" is distinctly heard, and 

 the glass tells that another noble hart must fall, 

 for the herd have paused, and the hinds are licking 

 his wound. They again seek safety in flight, but 

 their companion cannot keep pace with them. He 

 has changed his course ; the dogs are slipped and 

 put upon the scent, and are out of sight in a mo- 

 ment. The stalker follows ; he again climbs a 

 considerable way up the heights ; he applies the 

 telescope, but nothing of life can he behold, except 

 his few followers on the knolls around him. With 

 his ear to the ground he listens, and amidst the 

 roar of innumerable torrents, faintly hears the dogs 

 baying the quarry, but sees them not ; he moves on 

 from hill to hill towards the sound, and eventually 

 another shot makes the hart his own. The deer 

 are then bled and gralloched, and partially covered 

 with peat; the horns are left upright, and a hand- 

 kerchief is tied to them to mark the spot, that the 

 hill-men may find them at the close of the day. 

 Let the reader imagine how much the interest of 

 all this is enhanced by the majestic scenery of an 

 immense, trackless, treeless forest to which do- 

 mesticated life is a stranger where mountain, 

 corrie, cairn, and glen, thrown promiscuously to- 

 gether, present the grandest of savage landscapes, 

 and as the field of wild adventure, cast into shade 

 what Mr. Scrope not unaptly designates " the tame 

 and hedge-bound country of the South." 



