Just as he touched the earth again, alighting from his mighty spring,
with an aim sure and steady, and a cool practiced finger, the marksman
drew his trigger, and, quick, as light, the piece--well loaded, as its
dry crack announced--discharged its ponderous missile! But, bad luck on
it, even at that very instant, just in the point of time wherein the
charge was ignited, eighteen or twenty quail, flushed by the hubbub of
the hounds, rose with a loud and startling whirr, on every side of the
gray horse, under his belly and about his ears, so close as almost to
brush him with their wings--he bolted and reared up--yet even at that
disadvantage the practiced rifleman missed not his aim entirely, though
he erred somewhat, and the wound in consequence was not quite deadly.

The ball, which he had meant for the heart, his sight being taken under
the fore-shoulder, was raised and thrown forward by the motion of the
horse, and passed clean through the neck close to the blade bone.
Another leap, wilder and loftier than the last! yet still the stag
dashed onward, with the blood gushing out in streams from the wide
wound, though as yet neither speed nor strength appeared to be impaired,
so fleetly did he scour the meadow.

"He will cross, Frank yet!" cried Archer. "Mark! mark him, Forester!"

But, as he spoke, he set his rifle down against the fence, and halloaed
to the hounds, which instantly, obedient to his well known and cheery
whoop, broke covert in a body, and settled, heads up and sterns down, to
the blazing scent.

At the same moment A--- came trotting out from his post, gun in hand;
while at a thundering gallop, blaspheming awfully as he came on, and
rating them for "know-nothins, and blunderin' etarnal spoil-sports," Tom
rounded the farther hill, and spurred across the level. By this time
they were all in sight of Forester, who stood on foot, close to his
horse, in the mouth of the last gorge, the buck running across him sixty
yards off, and quartering a little from him toward the road; the hounds
were, however, all midway between him and the quarry, and as the ground
sloped steeply from the marksman, he was afraid of firing low--but took
a long, and, as it seemed, sure aim at the head.

The rifle flashed--a tine flew, splintered by the bullet, from the brow
antler, not an inch above the eye.

"Give him the other!" shouted Archer. "Give him the other barrel!"

But Frank shook his head spitefully, and dropped the muzz