OUR FOUR-FOOTED NEIGHBORS. 339 



vided crag, the decomposition of the softer stone between 

 the courses of the strata has wasted it away into narrow 

 galleries, which, passing behind the tall pillars of the pines 

 growing from the rifts and ledges, extend along the face of 

 the precipice, veiled by a deep tapestry of ivy, Avhich spreads 

 over the mighty wall of rock and hangs from shelf to shelf 

 over the covered ways. 



2. Beyond the crags, the bank of the forest, an abrupt 

 steep, covered with oak and copse wood, slopes down to the 

 river, its brow darkened with a deep-blue cloud of pines, 

 and its descent carpeted with moss, primroses, and pyrolas, 

 here and there hollowed into quaint "cuachs," filled with 

 hazels, thorns, and giant pines. Along this woody scarp, and 

 through its thick copse, the roe had made narrow galleries, 

 which communicated with the ivy corridors on the face of 

 the crag, to which there were corresponding ways upon the 

 opposite side. In that fortress of the rock, for shelter 

 from the sun and flies, and seclusion from the stir of the 

 world during the day in the heat of summer, the red deer 

 and roe made their secret haunt, concealed behind the deep, 

 dim veil of leaves, unseen and unsuspected in the cool hol- 

 lows of the cliff. The prying eye might search the crag 

 from below, and the beaters or the woodmen might whistle 

 and whoop and shout above, but nothing appeared or 

 moved except the gray falcon, which rose channering out of 

 the rifts. 



3. Above the crag the wooded bank was so abrupt that to 

 the front view there was no indication of a slope, and any 

 one who passed quickly over the brow was immediately out 

 of sight. At each descent beyond the extremities of the 

 whole range of rocks there was a common roe's run and 

 pass, which was supposed to be "deadly sure" if the deer 

 took the path, since the precipice below was believed to be 

 an infallible barrier against any intermediate escape. Often, 

 however, when pressed upon the terrace above, the deer 



