In a minute more, however, not from the bushes, but from the opposite chestnut-trees, which the low wood joined, trotted forth, at an easy pace, a tall splendid deer, bearing his antlered head near the ground, as if trying to scent out the path of his mate, whose voice he had heard. The moment he came into the full moonlight, however, he stood at gaze, as it is called, raising his proud head and looking steadfastly before him. Then, turning to the right and to the left, he seemed striving to see the object that he had not been able to discover by the smell; but, as he was still too far distant for any thing like a certain shot, Dickon once more ventured a low solitary call upon the beach-leaf. Had it been loud, or repeated more than once, the poor animal was near enough to have detected the cheat; but as it was, he was deceived, and trotting on for fifty yards more, again stood at gaze, with his head turned towards the trees under which the poacher was standing. Dickon quietly raised his gun, aimed deliberately, and fired just as the buck was again moving forward. The ball struck the deer directly below the horns, and, bounding up full four feet from the ground, he fell dead upon the spot where he had been standing. All the gipsies were now rushing forward to see their prize, but Dickon called them back; and keeping still under the shade of the trees, he made his way round to them severally, saying, "We must have another yet. Let him lie there! let him lie! That one shot has not been loud enough to scare the rest, and I am sure there is a herd there down at the end of the copse: so we must have another at all events; and if we go making a noise about that one, we shall frighten them. You, Bill, go round under those trees for five or six hundred yards, and then come into the thicket, and beat it up this way." Bill did not undertake the task without grumbling and remonstrance; asserting that everything that was tiresome was put upon him, while Dickon and the rest had the sport. A little persuasion, however, overcame his resistance, and he set off accordingly to perform the part assigned to him. The others, in the meantime, resumed their places, and now had to wait a longer time than at first; for the youth, not very well inclined to the task, was anything but quick in his motions. At the end of a quarter of an hour, however, a rustle and then a rush was heard in the bushes; and then the bounding sound of deer in quick flight, and, in a moment after, the whole herd sprang into the moonlight, and crossed the open ground at the full canter. They came fairly within shot of two of the gipsies in their passage, and two guns were instantly discharged. Both took effect; but one of the deer was only wounded, and was struggling up again, when the whole body of poachers rushed forward and ended its sufferings with the knife.