We noticed the hinds stopping every now and then and looking back, as they so often do when one of their number has been wounded and is behind them. By following the marks of blood on the stones we traced the course the stag had taken for about 200 yards, but after that we lost the tracks. We made the most careful search, and the stalker went some distance into the adjoining forest, but all in vain. The light was beginning to go, and at last we decided to give up the search, for that day at any rate. The stalker, who had had his glass on the stag when I had fired at him, said he was quite sure from what he saw then and from the way that the stag was bleeding that he had been mortally wounded and could not live long. I felt very much depressed, for if there is one thing that distresses me more than another it is to leave a wounded stag on the ground; and though I thought that the stalker with his experience was right in thinking that the stag could not live long, particularly as I knew my rifle and felt sure that I must have hit the stag somewhere not far from the heart, the fact remained that one could not be quite sure what had really happened. This was the last day of the season, and I was leaving on the following morning. The stalker promised me that he would search the ground on the following day, and that he would also tell the stalkers in the neighbouring forest, and that if he heard anything of the stag he would let me know. “I shall certainly know the head if it is ever found,” he said, “for when the stag looked straight at me I could see the space between his forks at the top. It was a ten-pointer, I think; the points were very regular, but as far as the head goes it is not much to grieve over, for it was on the narrow side.” “Still, it is a bad business,” I replied. “If we only had had a tracker we should certainly have got him without any trouble.” A really reliable tracker is indeed invaluable on an occasion of this kind, but it is only in a few forests that dogs are now used in following wounded stags. The noble deer-hounds which were the trusty allies of our fathers on the hill have during the last forty or fifty years been replaced in those forests where dogs are still used by the golden retriever, or more often by the collie, the two dogs last mentioned having been found more suitable for pursuing wounded deer. The deer-hound was so high-couraged that he would not bay the stag, but would pull him down or be killed by him. A further objection was that he would hunt by sight rather than by scent, it not being in his nature to put his nose to the ground, and it was therefore practically impossible to train him as a tracker. [Illustration: “THE TRUSTY ALLIES OF OUR FATHERS ON THE HILL.” From the Picture “After a Hard Day” by PHILIP STRETTON. By permission of Messrs. Landeker & Brown, Ltd. London, E.C.2, Publishers of the large engraving.]