I PART WITH MY FAWN 243 



soil, and are brought back without injury to a feather. I 

 cannot say so much for a man who, I believe, was once a tallow- 

 chandler at Bath, one of Mr. Ross's importations by way of a 

 tenant under Lady Stuart de Rothesay, who sows seeds on — I 

 cannot say cultivates — a farm. The fawn I reared from the 

 forest was this year a graceful doe ; she would come to my call, 

 feed out of my hand, and was the most graceful and innocent 

 pet imaginable. Unfortunately she formed an attachment to 

 an old Iceland pony, not much bigger than herself, brought 

 over by the late Lord Stuart de Rothesay, and to this pony she 

 paid a daily visit. This led her occasionally down to the land 

 rented by the tallow-chandler I speak of, who immediately 

 loaded a gun for her destruction. The instant he did so one of 

 his labourers came privately to tell me that my pet was in 

 danger; so, having nothing left for it, as I had previously 

 reported the deaths of favourite animals without redress, I con- 

 fined her, in the hope of inducing her to bear a chain and collar. 

 In vain : every wild foi-est feeling seemed to be awakened at 

 such thi-aldom, and, when I shut her up in a barn, she became 

 sad and suspicious, pining for the sweet grass on the cliff and 

 all her pretty playmates. I could not bear to see her pine ; so, 

 an application being made to me for a tame deer for a lady, by 

 Hen-ing, of the menagerie in the New Road, near Fitzroy 

 Square, I reluctantly made a crate in which she could travel by 

 train to London, and, with tears in my eyes, saw her depart for 

 the station in a cart, eating the last mouthful of green grass 

 that Rosie will ever have from my hand. Had I let her loose, 

 and the tallow-chandler had killed her, I should have risked the 

 commission of what would really have been a justifiable homi- 

 cide ; so it was best to let her go. May the lady, whoever she 

 is, be a kind mistress ; for in a few weeks more sJie wil 

 " the last of the New Forest deer."" 



