MY FIRST STAG AND SOME OTHERS 17 



How he managed the successful manoeuvre that fol- 

 lowed I have never quite clearly understood. Behind 

 us lay the slopes of the forest leading up to the foot 

 of Ben Loyal, and the deer had by this time disap- 

 peared round a distant shoulder. The light was 

 getting had, and I never expected to see the stag 

 again. But fifteen minutes later, after a steady mile 

 trot over heather, bog, and hill, I lay, a panting and 

 dishevelled biped, behind a rock on the reverse of a 

 long slope. We had come to it from one side. It 

 was just possible that the deer might, so Sandy said, 

 come across it from the other. For five minutes or so 

 we lay and got our breath. Every moment's delay 

 increased the possibility of my being able to hold the 

 rifle steady and shoot somewhere near the mark. 

 Suddenly Sandy grew excited. ' Here they come,' 

 he muttered, as the long ears and somewhat ragged 

 form of the leading hind appeared over the skyline 

 above. I crouched behind the rock and watched with 

 still panting breast and wondering gaze as the whole 

 herd of hinds, some twenty in number, trotted slowly 

 down the ridge, and within 30 yards of where I lay. 

 They had come round in a semicircle to their own 

 ground, and we had hit off their line almost too well. 

 Fortunately, the wind was right. They filed slowly 

 by in twos and threes, here and there a calf ; and then 

 there came a pause. I had crouched low behind the 

 great boulder. The deer were so close that I hardly 

 dared move my head. Sandy lay behind me, and 

 could see beyond the stone. I heard his whisper, 

 ' He's coming, sir,' and there trotted into view a fine 

 ten-point stag, all dark with peat-bog from his last 

 soiling-pool, lean-flanked, ruffed, the lordly master of 

 the harem who were unwittingly leading him to his 



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