90 FOREST CEEATURES. 



there are other signs beside which indicate a stag's pre- 

 sence and serve to mark the difference between him 

 and the female animal. The old veneurs knew and ac- 

 knowledged as trustworthy seventy-two such signs. I 

 shall afterwards name and describe a few of these, to 

 show how the minutest circumstance, if rightly observed, 

 may be made to afford reliable information. 



At the beginning of this chapter I spoke of the 

 seductiveness, of the enthralling power, that seemed 

 to attach to the deer forest ; to pervade its depths, and 

 especially to hang like a spell round its majestic antlered 

 habitant, as though the magnificent creature were not a 

 reality, but an apparition, a charmed presence. 



This influence is on no occasion so evident as when 

 the enthusiastic young hunter finds himself suddenly 

 confronting the monarch whose domain he has invaded. 

 WTiat is it that makes him then hold his breath, causes 

 his chest to swell, as though it would burst asunder, 

 and a tremor to come rippling on from limb to limb, 

 till the whole body is trembling with the irrepressible 

 excitement ? Is, then, after all, the old pagan belief 

 no fable, and does there dwell a spirit in the woods ? 7s 

 that creature other than he seems to us in the flesh ; 

 turned brute in bod}^, but not in animating soul ? And 

 does there look out from his eyes the human conscious- 

 ness of what he was before being metamorphosed and 

 banned in his present shape by a mighty spell, and now 



