88 CHAPTER XIII. 



Looking- through the sights I could dimly discern the front sight and 

 the top of the rear sight, which, as you will remember, was a wide V 

 and a deep one. The narrow bottom of that V where the bead of my 

 front sight must needs go if I were to have a normal aim was as 

 invisible as if non-existent 



I knew instantly of course that I should have to fire with a coarse 

 sight. I had little time to think and had no idea how much difference 

 changing my sighting would make at 300 yards. No opportunity was 

 given me for lengthy consideration of it, which was perhaps just as 

 well. As I lay and peered forward toward that dim hill with its two 

 hinds faintly, very faintly silhouetted, came the stag in sight. 



He was facing uphill and I could see the outlines of his body, but 

 none too clearly. At the view of him, at the very instant of his coming 

 I determined to hold with my coarse sight half way between his body 

 and the earth line. The moment he was fully exposed, gaining this 

 hold, I pressed the trigger. 



At the sound of the shot he whirled as if upon a pivot, facing 

 downhill now instead of up, still outlined against what light there was 

 left in the Western sky. Quickly as he had turned, just as quickly 

 my hand had snapped open and flung to the bolt of my dear little 

 gun , and before he could move or think of moving another step 

 my second shot was on its way, pointed this time at the earth line 

 itself where the sky marked its ending. 



I would you might have seen what happened then. It seemed to 

 me that the instant my forefinger contracted the stag went into the 

 air as if propelled by a catapult. It looked like many feet, he rose; 

 his forelegs doubled back under him; hind legs extended, he sprang 

 one great mighty, glorious leap into space and then disappeared into 

 nothingness, for the moment he came to the level of the earth again 

 he was out of my sight. 



Donald, his voice vibrant with emotion, intense, significant and 

 strained to a screaming point, fairly exploded at me: "You got un ! 

 You got un ! You got un !" Every nerve in me was tingling, and his 

 words stung me like an electric shock. 



It was a difficult shot to try. Anybody would say that, and it was 

 one chance in a hundred, yes, one in a thousand that it could be made. 



