;U6 NATURAL HISTORY READER. 



laid back, and her nock and step stilting away as stiff as if 

 she had been hung up in the larder for a week. This, 

 however, was not the worst ; all the surrounding hinds 

 which noticed her gait gathered here and there, and stood 

 on the tops of the little knolls, like statues, as straight as 

 pucks, with nothing visible but their narrow necks and two 

 peg-legs, and their broad ears perked immovably toward 

 us, like long-eared bats. 



C. MacLcllan gave mo a rueful look. "Never mind," 

 said I, "we shall see who will bo tired first." The for- 

 ester gave a glance of satisfaction, slid up his glass on the 

 dry bank, and we lay still as the stones around us, till the 

 little trouts, which had been disturbed by our convulsion, 

 became so accustomed to our shapes that they again 

 emerged from under the flat pebbles and returned to their 

 station in the middle of the stream, skulking their little 

 tails between my legs with no more concern than if I had 

 been a forked tree. At length the immobility of the hinds 

 began to give way : first one ear turned back, then an- 

 other, then they became sensible of the flies, and began to 

 flirt and jerk as usual, and finally one applied her slender 

 toe to her ear, and another rubbed her velvet nose upon her 

 knee ; it was more than half an hour, however, before, one 

 by one, they began to steal away, perking and snuffing, and 

 turning to gaze at the least air that whiffed about them. 



7. At length they all disappeared except one gray, 

 lean, haggard old grandmother of hinds, who had no teeth, 

 and limped with one leg, probably from a wound which she 

 received fifty or perhaps a hundred years before I was born. 

 Her vigilance, however, was only sharpened by age ; time, 

 and the experience of many generations, had made her 

 acquainted with all the wiles and crafts of the hill ; her 

 eyes and ears were as active as a kid's, and I have no doubt 

 she could smell like Tobit's devil. MacLellan looked at 

 her through his glass, spit into the burn, and grinned 



