se with three
others, he heard the hounds come running so directly towards him that
in spite of himself he raised his head to listen. And immediately
after, old Aunt Yeld came up in the greatest distress, and lay down
close to them. An old stag next to her was just rising to drive her
off, when a hound spoke so close to them that they all dropped their
chins to the ground and lay like stones. And poor Aunt Yeld whispered
piteously, "Oh! get up and run; I am so tired; do help me." But not a
stag would move, and our Stag, I am sorry to say, lay as still as the
rest. Then the hounds came within five yards of them, but still they
lay fast, till poor Aunt Yeld jumped up in despair and ran off. "May
you never know the day," she said, "when you shall ask for help and
find none! But the brown peat-stream, I know, will be my friend." And
she flung down the hill to the water in desperation, with the hounds
hard after her; and they never saw her again.

So the Stag lived on in the woods above the cliffs and on the forest
for two years longer. Each year found his head heavier and bearing
more points, his back broader, his body heavier and sleeker, and his
slots greater and rounder and blunter. He knew of all the best
feeding-grounds, so he was always well nourished, and he had learned
of so many secure hiding-places in the cliff from the old stag whom he
had served as squire, that he was rarely disturbed. More than once he
was roused by the hounds in spite of all that he could do, but he
would turn out every deer in the covert sooner than run himself; and
when, notwithstanding all his tricks, he was one day forced into the
open, he ran cunningly up and down the water as his mother had showed
him, and so got a good start of the hounds. Then he cantered on till
he caught the wind of a lot of hinds and calves and dashed straight
into the middle of them, frightening them out of their lives. He never
remembered how much he had disliked to be disturbed in this way when
he was a calf; he only thought that the hounds would scatter in all
directions after the herd. And so they did, while he cantered on to
the old home where he had known the Vixen and the Badger, took a good
bath, and then lay down chuckling at his own cleverness.

A very selfish old fellow you will call him, and I think you are
right; but unluckily stags do become selfish as they grow older. But
he always kept to the chivalrous rule that the post of honour in a
retreat is