204 A HAWK'S ADVENTURE 



and inelegantly egoist. We arrived at the foot of the 

 hill, had a brief crawl through wet peat hags to within 

 easy range of the stag, then a long wait among clouds 

 of esurient midges till he chose to rise to his feet, a 

 point-blank shot, and a heavy ten-pointer yielded his 

 gallant spirit with hardly a struggle. It was now past 

 five o'clock, and I was ten miles from home. Only one 

 incident in the return journey remains for record. It 

 was late gloaming — nearly dark — as I rode past the hol- 

 low in Leitir Dubh where I had left Dominie Sampson 

 asleep in the morning. He was there no longer ; but 

 through the gloom I could see the glimmer of white 

 paper. Weary as I was and in sore pain, I dismounted 

 in curiosity to ascertain what was the literature he had 

 been studying. It was a copy of Anne of Qeierstein. 

 ' Pro-di-gi-ous ! ' 



XXXVI 



In a former volume of this series^ I remarked upon the 



A Hawk's difficulty of defining Force except by certain 



Adventure technical terms intelligible only to experts, 



whereof I am not one. I used as an illustration of the 



effect of momentum — of the impact of a swiftly moving 



soft substance upon a stationary hard one — an instance 



which came under my own observation of a hen 



pheasant flying through a plate-glass window without 



receiving any injury. Strange to say I have since 



witnessed a similar performance by a bird of a very 



different character from the pheasant. This time it 



was a sparrow-hawk which, being disturbed by apasser-by 



1 Memories of the Months, third series, p. 41. 



