294 STAGHUNTING WITH THE 



room for the whole sinuous body, where first 

 the nose could only penetrate, and then another 

 deer follows and yet another, till in the murky 

 blackness of the winter's night a struggling 

 farmer's field is full of munching beasts, whose 

 presence can be heard, but by no means seen. 

 Hard worked and weary the farmer sleeps on 

 the bed of feathers which his careful spouse 

 has saved when the ducks were plucked for 

 market, with the dim gleam of a low turned 

 lamp beside his bed head, and wrestles in his 

 dreams with the farthing that wool has dropped 

 or the iniquitous rise of the poor rate. 



The stag, with his branching head, cannot 

 crawl through the gaps that sufftce the hind, 

 but he is a bold jumper and a clever climber, 

 and if he once can crook one foreleg over the 

 topmost binder, and gain a purchase with a 

 hinder toe amongst the slippery stone work 

 below, he will draw himself over to the coveted 

 feast, and once inside amongst the turnips will 

 do as much damage as half a dozen of his 

 smaller kind. But perhaps the farmer's son, 

 having noticed the hrst signs of these cervine 

 visits to the treasured crop, may have crept out 

 shivering in the frosty darkness, to disturb 

 the nightly trespassers, and with a yell, breathless 

 and discordant, rushes from a gateway right 

 across the dripping rows of strongly smelling 

 leaves. Up go the munching heads and long 



