88 STAG-HUNTING ON EXMOOR. 



"General;" by which, curiously enough, he had been 

 known in his young days in the regiment. 



He spoke little, and then always slowly and delibe- 

 rately in a deep bass voice. Nothing annoyed him so 

 much as a pushing, chattering stranger; and he would 

 put down such a one with an epigrammatic decision 

 which was peculiarly his own. Frantic people gal- 

 loping up with reports of deer were often treated 

 somewhat unceremoniously or subjected to a search- 

 ing examination on minute points which few could 

 pass. Such interviews he generally concluded with 

 an oracular cough of singular vigour, or with the 

 question," Has anyone else seen this so-called stag?" 

 People who have "seen a deer," and cannot say 

 whether it was stag, male deer, or hind, or Indeed 

 whether It was veritably a deer and not a pony, are 

 the pests of a master of staghounds ; and Mr. Bisset 

 had been deceived too often to trust to their reports. 



From this cause he was often set down by strangers 

 as purposely discourteous ; but those who knew him 

 knew better; they were aware what a kind, warm heart 

 there was beneath this seemingly cold exterior, and what 

 a fund of dry humour beneath his apparent solemnity. 

 Some of the conversations between him and excited 

 sportsmen were as good as a play ; the wild gestlcu- 



