unded
forward and made for a rocky defile on the farther side of the plateau.

"Come on, sir! Come on, sir!" the keeper called to Lionel. "You've hit
him. Come along, sir!"

"I haven't hit him--I missed--missed clean!" was the hopeless answer.

"I tell ye ye've hit him!" the keeper exclaimed. "Run, sir, run!--if
he's only wounded he may need the other barrel. God bless me, did ye not
hear the thud when the ball struck?"

Thus admonished Lionel unwittingly, but nevertheless as quickly as he
could, followed the keeper; and he could show a nimble pair of heels
when he chose, even when he was hampered with this heavy rifle. Not that
he had any heart in the chase. The stag had swerved aside just as he
fired; he knew he must have missed. At the same time any one who goes
out with a professional stalker must be content to become as clay in the
hands of the potter; so Lionel did as he was bid; and though he could
not overtake Roderick, he was not far behind him when they both reached
the pass down which the deer had fled.

And there the splendid animals were still in view--bounding up a stony
hillside some distance off, in straggling twos and threes, and going at
a prodigious speed. But where was the light-colored stag? Certainly not
among those brown beasts whose scrambling up that steep face was sending
a shower of stones and debris down into the silent glen below.

"I'm thinking he's no far aweh," Roderick said, eagerly scanning all the
ground in front of them. "We'll chist go forrit, sir; and you'll be
ready to shoot, for, if he's only wounded, he may be up and off again
when he sees us."

"But do you really think I hit him?" Lionel said, anxiously enough.

"I _sah_ him struck," the keeper said, emphatically. "But he never
dropped--no, not once on his knees even. He was off with the best of
them; and that's what meks me think he was well hit, and that he's no
far aweh."

So they went forward on the track of the herd, slowly, and searching
every dip and hollow. For Lionel it was a period of agonizing
uncertainty. One moment he would buoy himself up with the assurance that
the keeper must know; the rest he convinced himself that he had missed
the stag clean. Now he would be wondering whether this wide, undulating
plain really contained the slain monarch of the mists; again he pictured
to himself that light-colored, fleet-footed creature far away in advance
of all his companions, making for some distant sanctuary amo