“Look ye there, brother Walter!” at length cried Patrick Stewart suddenly, as he pointed to a hart with a magnificent head, which was crossing to this side of the river, at the ford you see above yonder. “Look ye there brother! there he goes at last!”
“By the rood, but that is the very fellow we want,” replied Sir Walter. “Watch him! See!—he takes the hill aslant. He will not go far, if we may judge from his present pace.”
“I saw him walk over that open knoll in the wood high up yonder,” said Patrick, after some minutes of pause. “He has no mind to go farther than the dip of the hill above. I think that we are sure of finding him there. What say you brother?”
“Thou art right, Patrick,” said Walter. “Then do thou run on, and take the long hollow in the hill-side, beyond the big pine tree yonder. I will follow up the slack behind us here. Let your sweep be wide, that we may be sure of stalking well in beyond him, so that, if we fail of getting proper vantage of him, we may be sure that we drive him not farther a-field. Let us take no sleuth-hound, nor bratchet neither, lest, perchance, we cause him alarm. You, my merry men, will tarry here for us with the dogs.”
Off went the two brothers, each in his own direction, and each with his bow in his hand, and his three arrows in his belt. In obedience to Sir Walter’s directions, Patrick hurried away to the great pine tree, and then began his ascent through the long hollow in the woody mountain’s side with all manner of expedition. After a long and fatiguing climb, he began to use less speed and more caution, as he approached nearer to the somewhat less steep ground, where his hopes lay. Then it was that he commenced making a long sweep around, stealing silently from tree to tree, and concealing himself, as much as he could, by keeping their thick trunks before him, and creeping along among the heather, where such a precaution was necessary. Having completed his sweep to such an extent as led him to believe that he had certainly got beyond the hart, he was about to creep down the hill, in the hope of soon coming upon him, when he chanced to observe a great uprooted pine, which lay prostrated a little way farther on, and somewhat above the spot where he then was, its head rising above the heather like a great green hillock. Thinking that he might as well have one peep beyond it before he turned downwards, and wishing to avail himself of its shade to mask his motions, he took a direct course towards it. But it so happened, that the hart had found it equally convenient for the same purpose, as well as for a place of outlook, for it had taken post close to it, on the farther side. Descrying Patrick Stewart through an accidental opening in the foliage, and having no fancy to hold nearer converse with him, the creature moved slowly away. His quick and practised eye caught a view of it through the opening, as it was going away up the hill, as it happened, in a direct line. Well experienced in woodcraft, he, in a loud voice, called out “hah!” As is common with red deer when in the woods, the hart made a sudden halt, and wheeled half round to listen, and in this way he placed his broadside to the hunter’s eye. This was but for an instant, to be sure; but in that instant Patrick Stewart’s arrow, passing through the break in the foliage of the pine, fixed itself deep into the shoulder of the hart.
“Clumsily done!” exclaimed Patrick Stewart from very vexation as he saw the hart bound off. “I’ll warrant me the arrow-head is deep into his shoulder blade. One single finger’s breadth more behind it would have made him mine own, and with all the cleverness of perfect woodcraft.”
Patrick, baulked and disappointed, now extended his sweep, and crossed and re-crossed the ground, with the hope of meeting his brother Sir Walter; but as he did not succeed in falling in with him, he followed the track of the hart for some distance up the hill, until he lost every trace of his slot upon the dry summit, after which he returned with all manner of haste to make his way downwards to the party in the valley below. This he did, partly with the expectation of meeting his brother Sir Walter there, and partly with the intention of getting the dogs, that he might make an attempt to recover his wounded hart. There he found—not his brother Sir Walter—but his brother Murdoch—who stood exulting over a dead stag. He was a great hart of sixteen, just such an one as he himself had been after.
“Thou see’st that I have the luck,” said Murdoch Stewart triumphantly.
“Whence camest thou, Murdoch? and how comes this?” demanded Patrick.
“All naturally enough, brother,” replied Murdoch Stewart carelessly. “As I was wandering idly on the hill-side above there, I espied the people here below, so I came sauntering down to see what they were about, and to hear news of ye all. But, as my luck would have it, I had hardly been with them the pattering of a paternoster, when the very hart that thou wentest after came bang down upon me—my shaft fled—and there he lies. Mark now, brother, is he not well and cleanly killed? Observe—right through the neck you see. But, ha!—it would seem that thou hast spent an arrow too—for these fellows tell me that thou tookest three with thee, and methinks thou hast but twain left in thy belt.”