all that is evil! but Mads is certainly a dare-devil
fellow, though I know nothing but what is honourable and good of him. He
shoots a head of deer now and then; but what matters that? there's
enough of them; far too many, indeed. There, you may see yourself how
they have cropped the ears of my rye. But here have we Niels the
game-keeper. Yes; you are tracking Black Mads. To-day he is better
mounted than you are."

While he was saying this, a hunter appeared in sight, coming towards
them at a quick trot from the side where they had first seen the
deer-rider. "Have you seen Black Mads?" cried he, before he came near
them.

"We saw one, sure enough, riding on a deer, but can't say whether he was
black or white, or who it was; for he was away in such haste that we
could hardly follow him with our eyes," said the farmer.

"The fiend fetch him!" cried the huntsman, stopping his horse to let him
take breath; "I saw him yonder in the Haverdal, where he was skulking
about, watching after a deer. I placed myself behind a small rising,
that I might not interrupt him. He fired, and a deer fell. Mads ran up,
leaped across him to give him the death-blow, when the animal, on
feeling the knife, rose suddenly up, squeezed Mads between his
antlers--and hallo! I have got his gun, but would rather get himself."
With these words he put his horse into a trot, and hastened after the
deer-stealer, with one gun before him on his saddle-bow, and another
slung at his back.

The traveller, who was going in nearly the same direction, now set off
with his guide, as fast as the latter could go at a jog-trot, after
having thrown off his wooden shoes. They had proceeded little more than
a mile, and had reached the summit of a hill, which sloped down towards
a small river, when they got sight of the two riders. The first had
arrived at the end of his fugitive course: the deer had fallen dead in
the rivulet, at a spot where there was much shallow water. Its slayer,
who had been standing across it, and struggling to free himself from its
antlers, which had worked themselves into his clothes, had just
finished his labour and sprung on land, when the huntsman, who at first
had taken a wrong direction, came riding past our traveller with the
rein in one hand and the gun in the other. At a few yards' distance from
the unlucky deer-rider he stopped his horse, and with the comforting
words, "Now, dog! thou shalt die," deliberately took aim at him. "Hold!