In a minute more, however, not from the bushes, but from the opposite chestnut-trees, which the low wood joined, trotted forth, at an easy pace, a tall splendid deer, bearing his antlered head near the ground, as if trying to scent out the path of his mate, whose voice he had heard. The moment he came into the full moonlight, however, he stood at gaze, as it is called, raising his proud head and looking steadfastly before him. Then, turning to the right and to the left, he seemed striving to see the object that he had not been able to discover by the smell; but, as he was still too far distant for any thing like a certain shot, Dickon once more ventured a low solitary call upon the beach-leaf. Had it been loud, or repeated more than once, the poor animal was near enough to have detected the cheat; but as it was, he was deceived, and trotting on for fifty yards more, again stood at gaze, with his head turned towards the trees under which the poacher was standing. Dickon quietly raised his gun, aimed deliberately, and fired just as the buck was again moving forward. The ball struck the deer directly below the horns, and, bounding up full four feet from the ground, he fell dead upon the spot where he had been standing.
All the gipsies were now rushing forward to see their prize, but Dickon called them back; and keeping still under the shade of the trees, he made his way round to them severally, saying, "We must have another yet. Let him lie there! let him lie! That one shot has not been loud enough to scare the rest, and I am sure there is a herd there down at the end of the copse: so we must have another at all events; and if we go making a noise about that one, we shall frighten them. You, Bill, go round under those trees for five or six hundred yards, and then come into the thicket, and beat it up this way."
Bill did not undertake the task without grumbling and remonstrance; asserting that everything that was tiresome was put upon him, while Dickon and the rest had the sport. A little persuasion, however, overcame his resistance, and he set off accordingly to perform the part assigned to him. The others, in the meantime, resumed their places, and now had to wait a longer time than at first; for the youth, not very well inclined to the task, was anything but quick in his motions. At the end of a quarter of an hour, however, a rustle and then a rush was heard in the bushes; and then the bounding sound of deer in quick flight, and, in a moment after, the whole herd sprang into the moonlight, and crossed the open ground at the full canter. They came fairly within shot of two of the gipsies in their passage, and two guns were instantly discharged. Both took effect; but one of the deer was only wounded, and was struggling up again, when the whole body of poachers rushed forward and ended its sufferings with the knife.
"Now, now!" cried Dickon, hastily recharging his gun, "we have got enough for once, I think; let us be off as soon as we can. We can hitch the venison over that nearest wall," and he turned to point in the direction to which he referred; but the sight that met his eyes at that moment almost made the powder-flask, with which he was in the act of priming, fall from his hands. Advancing from the chestnut-trees under which he himself had just been standing, was a party consisting of at least twelve strong men, apparently well armed, and he at once saw that all chance of escape for himself and his comrades, without a struggle, was over, as the keepers were coming up between them and the common, while on the other side lay the thick bushes from which the deer had issued, and in which his party must be entangled and taken if they attempted to fly in that direction, and to the westward, beyond the chestnut-trees, were the river and the park-keeper's house. Now, however, that the matter was inevitable, Dickon showed more resolution than he had hitherto done. "Stand to it, my men!" he cried: "they have nosed us, by----! there's no running now; we must make our way to that corner, or we're done."
His companions instantly turned at his exclamation; and whatever might be their internal feelings, they showed nothing but a dogged determination to resist to the last. The man who had fired the last shot instantly thrust a bullet into his gun, which he had already charged with powder; and, giving up their slain game for lost, the poachers advanced towards the angle of the wood nearest to the park-wall, keeping in a compact body, and crossing the front of the other party in an oblique line. The keepers, however, hastened to interpose, and came up just in time to prevent their opponents from reaching the trees. Thus, then, at the moment that they mutually faced round upon each other, the left of the gipsies and the right of their adversaries touched the wood, but the odds were fearfully in favour of the gamekeepers.
"Come, come, my masters, down with your arms!" cried Harvey, the head keeper; "it's no use resisting: do you not see we are better than two to one?"
The first reply was the levelling of the gipsies' fowling pieces; and notwithstanding the superiority of numbers and the anticipation of resistance, the keepers drew a step or two back; for under such circumstances no one can tell whose the chance may be, and the thought of unpleasant death will have its weight till the blood is warm. "Stand off!" cried Dickon, boldly: "master keeper, let us go free, or take the worst of it. We leave you your venison, and a good half-ounce bullet in each buck to pay for our pastime; but be you sure that the guns which sent those bullets can send others as true, and will send them very speedily, if you try to stop us."
"A bold fellow, upon my honour!" cried Sir Roger Millington, advancing, and standing calmly before the very muzzles of the gipsies' guns. "But hark ye, my good man, you came to get the venison; we came to get you; and, as we are rather more in number than you, it is not probable we shall let you escape. However, I will tell you what--to spare bloodshed, we will come to a compromise with you."
"You are the spy of a fellow, are you not," cried Dickon, "who came this evening asking for Pharold? Well, my knowing cove, be you sure the first shot fired you shall have one."
"But he speaks of a compromise, Dickon," cried one of his companions, lowering the gun a little from his shoulder; "better hear what he has to say."