78 FOEEST CREATURES. 



mountain-ranges with astonishing speed to hold his court 

 of love. At dawn, the forester will be surprised to find 

 the slot of a magnificent stag on the soft ground, which 

 he had not seen before. The astonishment of Robinson 

 Crusoe when seeing the print of a naked human foot 

 on the sand, will hardly have been greater. For he at 

 once perceives the stag is a stranger, and has not been 

 there until now. He passed in the night ; and he is 

 already gone, and is far off on his way to the trysting 

 place. On he goes, stirred and impelled by a vehement 

 longing : and throughout the night, when men are 

 asleep and the very earth seems to slumber, and all is 

 silent except the rivulets, his impatience drives him on- 

 ward ; as there is no one to scare him, he holds a direct 

 undeviating course ; he passes close to human dwellings, 

 and across homesteads and gardens, leaving his traces 

 behind him ; and on, too, still on, along the broad high- 

 way. He does not rest till he has reached the well- 

 remembered spot. 



Arrived there he will at first be seen in the train of 

 a single deer, and as the others shun and hide them- 

 selves from him, he unceasingly runs in all directions 

 with his nose to the ground, to discover where they are 

 concealed. Each one he finds is then immediately 

 forced to join the herd which is thus being formed, 



tlie 27tli of October 1860, a stag of four only landed on the island of 

 Muck, one of the inner Hebrides. The nearest isle whence he could 

 have come is ten miles distant. 



