“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 among the mountains.

“Here he is, sir!” Roderick cried, with a quick little chuckle; and the words sent a thrill through Lionel such as he had never experienced in his life before.  “No—­he’s quite dead,” the keeper continued, seeing that the younger man was making ready to raise his rifle again.  “I was thinking he was well hit—­and no far aweh.”

At the same moment Lionel had eagerly run forward.  With what joy and pride—­with what a curious sense of elation—­with what a disposition of good-will towards all the world—­he now beheld this splendid beast lying in the deep peat-hag that had hitherto hidden it from view.  The stag’s last effort had been to clear this gully; but it had only managed to strike the opposite bank with its forefeet when the death-wound did its work, and then the hapless animal had rolled back with its final groan into the position in which they now found it.  In a second, Roderick was down in the peat-hag beside it, holding up its head by one of the horns, and examining the bulletmark.