tood panting. It is not a humane thing to leave a deer to die slowly
of a rifle bullet, and Dick, reaching the pool, hesitated not, but threw
off his clothes, took his skene between his teeth, plunged in, and swam
the river.

All naked as he was he cut the stag's throat in the usual manner, and
gralloched him with all the skill of Bucklaw. This was very well, and
very well it would be to add a description of the stag at bay; but as I
never happened to see a stag at bay, I omit all that. Dick had achieved
success, but his clothes were on one side of a roaring river in spate,
and he and the dead stag were on the other. There was no chance of
fording the stream, and there was then no bridge. He did not care to
swim back, for the excitement was out of him. He was trembling with
cold, and afraid of cramp. "A mother-naked man," in a wilderness, with a
flood between him and his raiment, was in a pitiable position. It did
not occur to him to flay the stag, and dress in the hide, and, indeed, he
would have been frozen before he could have accomplished that task. So
he reconnoitred.

There was nobody within sight but one girl, who was herding cows. Now
for a naked man, with a knife, and bedabbled with blood, to address a
young woman on a lonely moor is a delicate business. The chances were
that the girl would flee like a startled fawn, and leave Dick to walk,
just as he was, to the nearest farmhouse, about a mile away. However,
Dick had to risk it; he lay down so that only his face appeared above the
bank, and he shouted to the maiden. When he had caught her attention he
briefly explained the unusual situation. Then the young woman behaved
like a trump, or like a Highland Nausicaa, for students of the "Odyssey"
will remember how Odysseus, simply clad in a leafy bough of a tree, made
supplication to the sea-king's daughter, and how she befriended him. Even
if Dick had been a reader of Homer, which is not probable, there were no
trees within convenient reach, and he could not adopt the leafy covering
of Odysseus.

"You sit still; if you move an inch before I give you the word, I'll
leave you where you are!" said Miss Mary. She then cast her plaid over
her face, marched up to the bank where Dick was crouching and shivering,
dropped her ample plaid over him, and sped away towards the farmhouse.
When she had reached its shelter, and was giving an account of the
adventure, Dick set forth, like a primeval Highlander, t