“I used one against the hart I went after,” said Patrick coldly.
“And missed him, brother—is’t not so?” said Murdoch laughing. “Well, I never hoped that I should live to wipe thine eye in any such fashion; for these varlets all say that this is the very hart that thou went’st after.”
“Nay, then,” replied Patrick with an air of indifference; “if this be the hart I went after, I must have found another great hart of sixteen the very marrow of him; and him I have so marked, that I’ll be sworn he will be known again; for I promise you that at this moment he beareth wood on his shoulder as well as on his head.”
“The hart thou sayest that thou sawest may be like Saint Hubert’s stag for aught I know,” said Murdoch; “but it is clear, from all that these fellows say, that there lies the very hart that thou went’st forth to kill, and that is no arrow of thine that hath fixed itself in his gullet.”
“I did see a hart—draw my bow at a hart—and sorely wound a hart,” said Patrick, rather testily; “and were it not that the scent is cold, and the hour so late, I think that the sleuth-hounds there, would soon help me to prove to thee that he is as fine a hart of sixteen as this which thou hast slain.”
“Cry your mercy, brother,” said Murdoch; “I knew not that such great harts of sixteen had been so rife hereabouts, as that one should start up as a butt for thine arrow the moment that the other had been lost to thee. Yet it is clear that thou hast spent an arrow upon something.—Ha!—by the way—where is our brother Walter? They tell me that he went up the hill-side with thee.”
“After seeking for him on the hill-side in vain, I reckoned on finding him here,” replied Patrick. “But if he be within a mile of us I’ll make him answer.”
He put his bugle to his lips, and awakened the echoes, with such sounds as were understood between Sir Walter and himself; but the echoes alone replied to him.
“He may have met with a deer which may have led him off in pursuit over the hill,” said Patrick.
“Aye,” said Murdoch; “he may have fallen in with your hart of sixteen—yea, or another, for aught I know, seeing that harts of sixteen are now so rife on these hills.”