* * *

SCOTTISH SPORTING.

(_Concluded from page_ 137.)

But here come the graces of the forest, fifty at least in the herd--how
beautifully light and airy; elegance and pride personified; onward they
come in short, stately trot, and tossing and sawing the wind with their
lofty antlers, like Sherwood oak taking a walk; heavens! it is a sight
of sights. Now advance in play, a score of fawns and hinds in front of
the herd, moving in their own light as it were, and skipping and leaping
and scattering the dew from the green sward with their silvery feet,
like fairies dancing on a moonbeam, and dashing its light drops on to
the fairy ring with their feet of ether. O! it was a sight of living
electricity; our very eyes seemed to shoot sparks from man to man, and
even the monkey himself, as we gazed at each other in trembling
suspense.

"Noo, here they coom wi' their een o' fire an' ears o' air," whispered
the Ettric poet.

"Hush," quoth I, "or they'll be off like feathers in a whirlwind, or
shadows of the lights and darks of nothingness lost in a poet's
nightmare."

"A _sumph_ ye mean," answered Jammie.

"Hush, there they are gazing in the water, and falling in love with
their own reflected beauty."

"Mark the brindled tan buck," whispered one keeper to the other. They
fired together, and both struck him plump in his eye of fire; mine
seemed to drop sparks with sympathy: he bounded up ten feet high--he
shrieked, and fell stone dead; Gods, what a shriek it was; I fancy even
now I have that shriek and its hill-echo chained to the tympanum of my
ear, like the shriek of the shipwrecked hanging over the sea--heavens!
it was a pity to slay a king I thought, as I saw him fall in his pride
and strength; but by some irresistible instinct, my own gun, pulled, I
don't know how, and went off, and wounded another in the hip, and he
plunged like mad into the river, to staunch his wounds and defend
himself against the dogs. Ay, there he is keeping them at bay, and
scorning to yield an inch backward; and now the keeper steals in behind
him and lets him down by ham-stringing him: but when he found his
favourite dog back-broken by the buck, why he cursed the deer, and
begged our pardon for swearing; and now he cuts a slashing gash from
shoulder to chop to let out the blood; and there lay they, dead, in
silvan beauty, like two angels which might have been resting on the
pole, and spirit-stricken into ice before they had p