At length one of the dogs was heard to bellow forth his joyous discovery. Will’s breath began to come and go more quickly, in his intense anxiety that his pupil should distinguish herself at the approaching crisis. Then it seemed to him that at some distance off he saw one or two of the young firs tremble, when there was not a breath of wind to stir them. He watched these trees and the bushes adjoining intently, but they were again quite motionless; the dog, too, only barked at intervals. All at once, however, he saw, coming down a lane in the brushwood, two branched yellow tips, which paused and remained stationary, with only a single bush between them and the open space fronting Miss Brunel. They were the horns of a deer which now stood there, uncertain by which way to fly from the dogs behind him. "If she could only catch sight of these horns," he said to himself, "and understand to fire through the bush, she would kill him to a certainty." Evidently, however, she did not see the horns; perhaps her position prevented her. So, with his own heart beating rapidly now, Will waited for the moment when the dogs would drive the deer out into the clear sunlight, immediately underneath the muzzle of her gun. A sharp bark from one of the beagles did it. Will saw the light spring of the deer out into the open, and the same glance told him that Annie Brunel had shrunk back with a light cry, and that the gun, balanced for a moment on the edge of the mass of roots, was about to fall on the ground. At the same moment he received an astounding blow on the side that nearly knocked him over; and his first instinct was that of an Englishman—to utter an oath, clench his fist, and turn round to find a face to strike at. But before the instinct had shaped itself into either thought or action, the sudden spasm passed into a sort of giddiness; he fancied the pine-tree before him wavered, put out his hand to guard himself, and then fell, with a loud noise in his ears. When Miss Brunel saw the gun tumble on the ground and heard the report, she clasped her hands over her eyes in a vague instantaneous horror of any possible result. The next moment she looked up, and there was a black mass lying on the ground behind the tall tree. Her only thought was that he lay dead there as she ran to him, and knelt down by him, and caught him round the neck. White-lipped, trembling in every limb, and quite unconscious of what she did, she put her head down to his, and spoke to him. There were three words that she uttered in that moment of delirious pity, and self-reproach, and agony, which it was as well he did not hear; but uttered they were, never to be recalled. When he came to himself, he saw a white face bending over him, and had but a confused notion of what had occurred. With a vigorous effort, however, mental and physical, he pulled himself together and got into a sitting posture.