108 AMID THE HIGH HILLS 
in the sunlight as if studded with many diamonds 
— most, if not all, of these things I saw in this 
particular stalk. Everything, however, comes to 
an end, and so at last I succeeded in getting a shot 
at the heaviest of the stags, who was standing on 
the side of a very rocky and precipitous hill. He 
ran a few yards and fell down dead. It was, 
indeed, fortunate that he fell where he did, 
caught between two rocks, for immediately below 
these rocks nothing could have stopped him from 
rolling down a precipice of several hundred feet, 
and, as old Angus said, the venison would not 
have been worth taking home and the horns 
would have been smashed to atoms. The stag, 
an old one in good condition, was dragged down 
to a place where the pony could come up, and, 
leaving Angus to find and help the pony boy, the 
stalker and I started to work our way homewards 
across the hill. We had been moving slowly 
onwards, spying from time to time, when we 
discovered a large number of stags feeding below 
us. A circuitous stalk brought us up to them, 
but in a very awkward position. It was impossible 
to get a shot, except by coming up to a point at 
the top of the hiQ below which they were feeding, 
and we should then be much too close to them. 
