[5] See The Trail of the Sandhill Stag, by Ernest Seton-Thompson, from which is also drawn the information about the deer's moist nose.
As we look into the noble face of the Monarch of the Glen, we feel a sense of kinship with him, like the experience of Yan in the beautiful story of "The Sandhill Stag." It was after following the trail of the deer many days that the youth at last came suddenly face to face with the object of his desire, "a wondrous pair of bronze and ivory horns, a royal head, a noble form behind it." As they gazed into each other's eyes, every thought of murder went out of Yan's heart, and gave place to a strange sense of fellowship. "Go now without fear," he said, "but if only you would come sometimes and look me in the eyes, and make me feel as you have done to-day, you would drive the wild beast wholly from my heart, and then the veil would be a little drawn, and I should know more of the things that wise men have prayed for knowledge of."
V
THE TWA DOGS
The Scotch poet Robert Burns, who died a few years before Landseer's birth, was a kindred spirit of the painter in his love of dogs and his sense of humor. An early picture by Landseer illustrating the poem of "The Twa Dogs" fits the verses as if painter and poet had worked together. We are told that Burns once had a collie which he named Luath, after a dog in Ossian's "Fingal." The favorite came to an untimely end, through some one's cruelty, and the poet was inconsolable. He determined to immortalize Luath in a poem, and this is the history of the tale of "The Twa Dogs."
The poem relates how
"Upon a bonny day in June
When wearing through the afternoon,
Twa dogs, that were na thrang[6] at hame,
Forgather'd ance upon a time."
[6] Busy.
Of the two dogs, one is the collie Luath, here represented as the friend and comrade of a ploughman. He is described in broad Scotch as