"Curse him! curse him! how he rides!" muttered the Parson, watching that grey horse sail over the moor, in smooth and easy stride, like the stroke of a bird's wing, while John Garnet sat home in the saddle, and chose his ground with the judgment of one born and bred in the West. Katerfelto carried his master without difficulty alongside of the hounds; Parson Gale, half-a-mile off, with no immediate prospect of getting nearer, admired and envied the daring rider, even while he swore to have his blood. Half-a-mile astern, in an enclosed country, is bad enough but to be half-a-mile behind a good horse crossing Exmoor at speed with a pack of hounds in front, is virtually to be in another kingdom! To save his life, the Parson could not come within hailing distance of his foe, do what he would. Yet he tried his wickedest! Cassock's sides were scored with the unaccustomed spur. Cassock's speed was taxed unfairly up steep incline and over level marsh. The black nag was as good a beast as ever looked through a bridle, but he carried a stone and a half more weight, and had neither the blood, nor the size, nor the speed and scope of Katerfelto. "He's a heavy deer," muttered the Parson, with an unclerical oath and a strong pull at his horse. "He'll hang in Badgeworthy woods, or 'soil' in Badgeworthy water. It's the only chance in the game now, for at such a pace as this, the farther I ride the farther I am left behind!" Not once in a season, not once in ten seasons, had the Parson been so out in his reckoning. The wild red deer while he is the noblest and most courageous of those forest creatures that trust for safety to their speed, is also the most eccentric and unaccountable in his flight. Let us borrow the grey-speckled wings of the moor-buzzard hunting leisurely overhead, and accompany our stag through the rush-grown swamps of Exmoor, as he crosses its undulating surface at that free pitching gallop which he seems so rarely to hasten in alarm, or to modify from fatigue. His taper head and noble antlers are thrown slightly back, his dark and gentle eye seems fuller than in repose, but brightened by a consciousness of intelligence rather than by the tension of anxiety or distress. His nostrils are spread to catch the taint of an enemy in the breeze, and his mouth is open, while he is yet fresh and full of strength. When he closes it, there will be many a reeking flank besides his own, for wind and limb will have failed at last, and the only force left him then will be the courage to die. In the meantime he is all energy, vitality, and speed. To be hunted is but a generous rivalry that tests the powers in which his spirit takes pride, that wages his own endurance and sagacity against the hostile instinct of his natural enemy the hound. Speeding over the moor, it seems that he can mock at the untiring hate of Tarquin, Tancred, and their comrades, yelling on his track, fierce, busy, and persevering, but many a furlong in the rear.