The Story of a Red Deer

by Sir J. W. Fortescue

"Oh! you'm speaking of great-grandmother, my lord. She's in to bury, but she's got terrible old and tejious." And she popped into a hole, from which after a while old Bunny came out. Her coat was rusty, her teeth were very brown, and her eyes dim with age; and at first she hardly seemed to recognise the Stag; but she had not quite lost her tongue, for after a time she put her head on one side and began.

"Good-day, my lord; surely it was you that my Lady Tawny brought to see me years agone, when you was but a little tacker. 'Tis few that comes to see old Bunny now. Ah! she was a sweet lady, my Lady Tawny, but her's gone. And Lady Ruddy was nighly so sweet, but her's gone. And the old Greyhen to Badgworthy, she was a good neighbour, but her's gone; and her poults be gone, leastways they don't never bring no poults to see me. And my last mate, he was caught in a net. I said to mun, 'Nets isn't nothing;' I says, 'When you find nets over a bury, bite a hole in mun and run through mun, as I've a-done many times.' But he was the half of a fule, as they all be; and he's gone. And there's my childer and childer's childer, many of them's gone, and those that be here won't hearken to my telling. And—"

But here the other Rabbit cut in. "Let her ladyship spake to 'ee, grandmother. Please not to mind her, my lady, for she's mortal tejious."

But old Bunny went on. "Is it my Lady Tawny or my Lady Ruddy? I'm sure I can't tell. I'm old, my lady, and they won't let me spake. But I wish you good luck with your little son. Ah! the beautiful calves that I've seen, and the beautiful poults, and my own beautiful childer. But there's hounds, and there's hawks, and there's weasels and there's foxes; and there's few lasts so long as the old Bunny, and 'tis 'most time for her to go." Then she crept back slowly into the hole, and they saw her no more.

So they went on and found other deer; but Ruddy was gone, as old Bunny had said, and Aunt Yeld alone remained of the Stag's old friends. She too was now very old and grey, and her slots were worn down, and her teeth and tushes blunted with age. But the Hind and Calf were delighted to meet with deer again, and they soon made friends and were happy. But as the autumn passed away and winter began to draw on, the Stag grew anxious to return to the valley again, and would have had the Hind come too; but she begged so hard to be allowed to stay on the moor, that he could not say her no. She always lay together with other Hinds, and they gossiped so much about their calves that the Stag took to the company of other stags on Dunkery; but he always had a craving to get back to the valley for the winter, and after a few weeks he went back there by himself.

And lucky it was for him, as it chanced, for in January there came a great storm of snow, which for three weeks covered the moor, blotting out every fence and every little hollow in an unbroken, trackless waste of white. The deer on the forest were hard put to it for food, and even our Stag in the valley was obliged to go far afield. But he soon found out the hay-mows where the fodder was cut for the bullocks, and helped himself freely; nor was he ashamed now and then to take some of the turnips that had been laid out for the sheep, when he could find them. So he passed well through the hard weather, and when the snow melted and the streams came pouring down in heavy flood, he saw the old Salmon come sailing down in his dirty red suit, and thought that, though both of them had been through hard times, he had got through them the better of the two.

Then the spring came and he began to grow sleek and fat; and, when he shed his horns, the new ones began once more to grow far larger than ever before. So he settled down for a luxurious summer, and took the best of everything in the fields all round the coverts. And when the late summer came he found that he needed a big tree to help him to rub the velvet from his horns, so he chose a fine young oak and went round it so often, rubbing and fraying and polishing, that he fairly cut the bark off from all round the trunk and left the tree to die.

One morning, soon after he had cleaned his head, he went out to feed in the fields as usual, and had just made his lair in the covert for the day, when he was aware of a man, who came along one of the paths with his eyes on the ground. The Stag waited till he was gone, and then quietly rose and left the valley for the open moor. For he had a shrewd suspicion that all was not right when a man came round looking for his slot in the early morning; and he was wise, for a few hours later the men and hounds came and searched for him everywhere. And he heard them from his resting place trying the valley high and low, and chuckled to himself when he thought how foolish the man was who thought to harbour him in such a fashion.

But after this he left the valley for good, and went back to the coverts that overhung the sea, where he hid himself so cunningly day after day that he was never found during the whole of that season. And when October came and the deer began to herd together, he looked about for his wife, but he could not find her anywhere, and he had sad misgivings that the hounds might have driven her away, or worse, while he was away in the valley. His only comfort was the reflection that if he wished to marry again, and he and another stag should fancy the same bride, he could fight for her instead of stealing her away. All that winter he lay on Dunkery with other stags, as big as himself and bigger, for he was now a fine Deer, and began to take his place with the lords of the herd. And he grew cunning too, for he soon found out that hinds and not stags are hunted in the winter-time, and he did not distress himself by running hard when there was no occasion for it. He would hear the hounds chasing in the woods quite close to him and never move.

One winter's day when he was lying in a patch of gorse with three others, he heard the hounds come running so directly towards him that in spite of himself he raised his head to listen. And immediately after, old Aunt Yeld came up in the greatest distress, and lay down close to them. An old stag next to her was just rising to drive her off, when a hound spoke so close to them that they all dropped their chins to the ground and lay like stones. And poor Aunt Yeld whispered piteously, "Oh! get up and run; I am so tired; do help me." But not a stag would move, and our Stag, I am sorry to say, lay as still as the rest. Then the hounds came within five yards of them, but still they lay fast, till poor Aunt Yeld jumped up in despair and ran off. "May you never know the day," she said, "when you shall ask for help and find none! But the brown peat-stream, I know, will be my friend." And she flung down the hill to the water in desperation, with the hounds hard after her; and they never saw her again.