20 DEER-STALKING. 



thoroughly graphic : " Yonder, by the hirches, stands 

 a red deer, snuffing the east wind ! He suspects an 

 enemy in that airt ; but death comes upon him, with 

 stealthy foot, from the west : and if Apollo and Diana 

 be now propitious, his antlers shall be entangled in 

 the heather, and his hoofs beat the heavens. Flourish 

 the rifle a tinkle as of iron and a hiss accompanying 

 the explosion and the king of the wilderness, bound- 

 ing up into the air with his antlers higher than ever 

 waved chieftain's plume, falls down stone dead where 

 he stood ; for the blue pill has gone through his 

 vitals, and lightning itself could hardly have withered 

 him into more instantaneous cessation of life ! He 

 is an enormous animal ! What antlers ! Roll him over 

 once on his side See ! up to our breast reaches the 

 topmost branch ! He is a ' stag of ten ;' his eye 

 has lost the flash of freedom the tongue that browsed 

 the brushwood is bitten through by the clenched 

 teeth the fleetness of his feet has felt that fatal 

 frost the wild heart is hushed and tame ! and there 

 the monarch of the mountains the king of the cliffs 

 the grand lama of the glens the sultan of the soli- 

 tudes the dey of the deserts the royal ranger of 

 the woods and forests yea, the very prince of the 

 air, and thane of thunder, ' shorn of all his beams, 1 

 lies motionless as a dead jackass by the way-side ! 

 he, who at dawn had borrowed the wings of the wind 

 to carry him across the cataracts ! " 



