him as the dark
man whom he had seen in the morning, for his hat was crushed in, and
his clothes caked with mire from head to foot. And he toiled on,
looking round him on all sides, till he caught his foot in a tussock
of grass, and fell on his nose; and what he said when he got up I
don't know, though I might guess, for he looked very cross.

So he too passed out of sight, and the sun went down, and the mist
stole over the face of the moor, and the Hind and Calf were left alone
with the music of the flowing water to sing them to sleep. But they
never saw that old Stag again.

CHAPTER V

And now the grass of the forest turned fast from green to yellow, the
blossom faded off the heather, and the leaves of the woods turned to
gold and to russet and to brown, and fluttered down to the kind earth
which had raised them up in the spring. The nights too grew chillier
and chillier; but the Hind and Calf did not mind that, for their coats
only grew the thicker and warmer to protect them. But what was far
more terrible was the hideous roaring that continued all night long in
all quarters of the moor. It was some days before the Calf found out
what it was, for his mother seemed always dreadfully frightened unless
he were well hidden away. But once when she had left him for a short
time snugly tucked away on a combe's side, he saw a great Stag come
down the combe driving a little herd of half a dozen Hinds before him.
The Calf was astonished at the sight of him, for the Stag was quite
different now from any that he had seen in the summer. The glossy
coat was gone, and the great round body was lean, ragged, and tucked
up, and stained with half-dried mud. His neck again was twice its
usual size and looked still bigger under its great shaggy mane; and
his face was not noble and calm, but fierce and restless and furrowed
by two deep dark lines, so that altogether he was a most
disreputable-looking old fellow.

Presently he stopped at a little boggy spot by the water's side; and
there he reared up, and plunging his great antlers into the ground he
tore it up, and sent the black mire flying over his head. Then he
threw himself down into the bog and rolled in it and wallowed in it,
churning it up with horn and hoof, like a thing possessed. At last he
got up, all dripping and black, and stretching out his great neck,
till the hair of his mane hung straight and lank with the black drops
running from it, he roared and roared ag