In a sequestered dell on the slope of the hills, a lordly stag and several hinds were enjoying themselves that morning among the bracken and bright mosses, partially screened from the sun by the over-arching boughs of birch and hazel, and solaced by the tinkling music of a neighbouring rill. Thick underwood concealed the dell on all sides; grey lichen-covered boulders surrounded it; no sound disturbed it save the faint cry of the plover and curlew on the distant shore, or the flap of a hawk’s wing as it soared overhead. Altogether it looked like a safe and sure retreat, but it did not prove to be so.
Mingled with the plaintive cries of the wild fowl, there came a faint—barely perceptible—sound of the human voice. The stag pricked up his ears, and raised his antlered head. It was by no means a new sound to him. The shepherd’s voice calling to his collie on the mountain-side was a familiar sound, that experience had taught him boded no evil. The converse of friends as they plodded along the roads or foot-paths that often skirted his lairs, had a tone of innocence about it which only induced caution—not alarm. But there was nothing of this in the sounds that now met his ears. He raised himself higher, opened his nostrils wider, sniffed the tainted air, and then, turning his graceful head, made some remark—we presume, though we cannot be positive on this point—to his wives.
These, meek and gentle—as females usually are, or ought to be—turned their soft inquiring gaze on their lord. Thus they stood, as if spell-bound, while the sounds slowly but steadily increased in volume and approached their retreat. Presently a shoulder of the mountain was turned by the drivers, and their discordant voices came down on the gentle breeze with unmistakable significance.
We regret being unable to report exactly what the stag then said to his wives, but the result was that the entire family bounded from their retreat, and, in the hurry and alarm of the moment, scattered along various glades, all of which, however, trended ultimately towards those mountain fastnesses that exist about and beyond the Eagle Cliff.
Two of the hinds followed their lord in a direction which led them out of the wood within sight of, though a considerable distance from, the white rock behind which Jackman and Quin were concealed. The others fled by tracks somewhat higher on the hill-sides, where however, as the reader knows, the enemy was posted to intercept them.
“Sure it’s a purty stag, afther all,” whispered Quin, who, in spite of elephantine-Indian sport, was somewhat excited by this sudden appearance of the Scottish red-deer. “But they’re a long way off, sor.”
“Not too far, if the rifle is true,” said Jackman, in a very low voice, as he put up the long-range sight.
“You’ll git a good chance at the stag whin he tops the hillock forenent you, sor,” remarked the somewhat garrulous Irishman.
“I won’t fire at the stag, Quin,” returned Jackman, quietly. “You and I have surely killed enough of bigger game abroad. We can afford to let the stag pass on to our friends higher up, some of whom have never seen a red-deer before, and may never have a chance of seeing one again.”
All this was said by the sportsman in a low, soft voice, which could not have been heard three yards off, yet his sharp eye was fixed intently on the passing deer. Seeing that there was no likelihood of their coming nearer, he raised his rifle, took steady but quick aim, and fired. One of the hinds dropped at once; the other followed her terrified lord as he dashed wildly up the slope.