The Story of a Red Deer

by Sir J. W. Fortescue

One day they were lying out in the grass as usual, and our little Calf was having a great game of romps with the little Hind. The Stag was not with them, but Aunt Yeld was standing sentry, when all of a sudden she came back in a great fluster, not at all like a stag, as she was always trying to be.

"Quick, quick, quick!" she said. "I can wind them and I can see them. Call your Calves and let us go. Quick, quick!"

Then the two mothers rose up in a terrible fright. "Quick," said Aunt Yeld again. "Run away as fast as you can!"

"But our Calves can't keep up if we go fast," pleaded the two mothers.

"Bless the Calves, I never thought of that," said Aunt Yeld. "Wait a minute; look!"

Then they looked down across the rolling waves of grass flecked by the shadows of the flying clouds, and a mile and a half away they saw a moving white mass, with a dark figure before it and another dark figure behind it. The mass stood in deep shadow, for a cloud hung over it; but the cloud passed away and then the sun flashed down upon it, and what the Deer saw (for they have far better eyes than you or I) was this. Twenty-five couples of great solemn hounds trotting soberly over the heather with a horseman in a white coat at their heads and another at their sterns, and the coats of hounds and horses shining as glossy as their own. A fresh puff of wind bore a wave of strange scent to the nostrils of the Deer, and our little Calf snuffed it and thought it the most unpleasant that he had ever tasted. "Remember it, my son," whispered his mother to him, "nasty though it be, and beware of it."

But Aunt Yeld stood always a little in advance, talking to herself. "I passed just in front of the place where they are now on my way back from breakfast this morning," she murmured. "I trust that scent has failed by this time. Ah!"

And as she spoke some of the hounds swung suddenly with one impulse towards them, but the horseman behind them galloped forward quick as thought, and turned them back; and there came on the wind the sound of a shrill yelp, which made all three of the Hinds to quiver again. Then the mass began to move faster than before, and the Deer watched it go further and further away from them till at last it settled down to its first pace and vanished out of sight.

"Well, that is a mercy," said Aunt Yeld with a deep sigh. "I thought it was full early yet for those detestable creatures to begin their horrible work again. I think that we are safe now, but I'll just make sure in case of accidents."

And with that she began to trot about in the strangest fashion. For she made a great circle to the track by which she had come back from feeding in the early morning, and ran back along it for some way, and then she turned off it, and after a time made another circle which brought her to a little stream. Then she ran up the water and made another circle which brought her back again.