STRATEGY OF THE STAG. 
221 
an unexpected chance, I was going to see a hard-run stag display- 
one by one, in outwitting the science of the enemy, manoeu- 
vres that I knew to be capable of routing the most sagacious 
hunter, and of which a consummate tactician was about without 
suspecting it, to teach me in one lesson the practice and the theory. 
Hardly had the animal doubled his track than he made a side 
bound, redescended by a deep ditch full of water, where I saw 
him going and coming several times toward the causeway to the 
right of the swamp ; leaped on a big pile of wood which he tra- 
versed to the very end, threw himself without touching earth into 
a little boat moored to the bank that quivered under his weight, 
and thence beating the water, gained majestically by swimming, a 
place thick covered with reeds nearly dried by the sun of the 
dog days, and let himself down where with his body buried in the 
mud, and the woods close upon his back, he was completely invis- 
ible for every other spectator but ourselves. 
Twenty minutes thus passed, I and my companion hardly daring 
to breathe, and the poor animal devoured by horse flies in his 
aquatic post, testifying only by an almost continual movement of 
the two ears that he was not transformed into a water lily, when 
the sound of the horn and soon men’s voices encouraging some 
English dogs announced the approach of a hunt. The stag 
stands perfectly still in the midst of the reeds, while three hunt- 
ers on horseback debouched from a road at the end of the plain. 
A moment after, the pack came in sight, and as the dogs unde- 
cided, snuffed about in the dust of the road, some of them yelp- 
ing occasionally, others trying here and there at the copse, one of 
the new comers, a hale old man in a hunting dress, on a large half- 
blooded bay, dismounted with rather a vexed expression, and en- 
tering the same boat where the stag had gone before him, filled with 
water a little leathern cup that he had just drawn from his pocket. 
“Well, Fortin,” said he to one of the two men who had taken 
his horse’s bridle, “ here is still a good day for us I hope.” 
The individual thus called did not answer. , . . his inquiring 
eye was fixed on the ground, and his countenance betrayed disap- 
pointment. 
“ Twice in the same month, to miss the same animal,” continued 
