152 STAG-HUNTING ON EXMOOR. 



below the whole time. Arthur Heal will do so, and 

 reach the bottom before any one else, but a great 

 many horses decline to go down except at a slow walk, 

 and a great many more riders refuse to go down it 

 at all. 



Sometimes a splash on a stone will tell the hunts- 

 man what he wants, and this is anxiously looked for 

 when the deer, at the junction of two streams, has had 

 the choice of going up which he will. Some of my 

 readers may remember a beautiful bit of hunting in 

 September, 1884, when a stag followed the river Bray 

 for three miles, in spite of bars, bridges, and flood- 

 gates, without leaving an atom of scent behind him. 

 At the junction of a tributary stream, just below a 

 bridge, where a deer might have been expected to 

 get on the bank for a moment, there was still nothing 

 for hounds to acknowledge ; but there was a splash on 

 a pole hung on to the bridge (to keep the cattle back), 

 and one of the hounds, after vainly trying to walk along 

 it, Blondin-wise, swam out to see if his nose would tell 

 him anything. This was enough, and after another 

 mile and a half they ran up to the deer in the water. 

 In truth, the sagacity of hounds in this water work is 

 marvellous. Even without bidding they will, on reach- 

 ing the water, divide themselves into two parts, each 



