The stag, by this time, which had been aiming hitherto to cross the road on which she was galloping, had been turned several times by the fresh relay of alans, which were untired and unimpaired of speed, and had been thus edged gradually away from the road and bridge, toward the white dogs, which were now running, as it is technically termed, _cunning_, laying up straight ahead, on a parallel line, and almost abreast with the deer. Now they drew forward, shot ahead, and passed him. At once, seeing his peril, he wheeled on his haunches, and, with a desperate last effort, headed once more for the road, striving, for life! for life! to cut across the right-hand couple of deer grayhounds; but, fleet as he was, fleeter now did they show themselves, and once more he was forced to turn, only to find the white dogs directly in his path. One, the taller and swifter of the two, was a few yards in advance of the other, and, as the stag turned full into his foaming jaws, sprang at its throat with a wild yell. But the deer bounded too, and bounded higher than the dog, and, as they met in mid air, its keen, sharp-pointed hoofs struck the brave staghound in the chest, and hurled him to the ground stunned, if not lifeless. Four strides more, and he swept like a swallow over a narrow reach of the little river; and then, having once more brought the three surviving hounds directly astern, turned to the westward along the river shore, and cantering away lightly, no longer so hard pressed, seemed likely to make his escape toward a broad belt of forest, which lay some mile and a half that way, free from ambuscade or hidden peril. At this turn of the chase, fiercer was the excitement, and wilder waxed the shouting and the bugle blasts of the discomfited followers of the chase, none of whom were nearer to the bridge than a full half mile. But so animated was the beautiful young lady, whose face had flushed crimson, and then turned ashy pale, with the sudden excitement of that bold exploit of dog and deer, that she clapped her hands joyously together, unhooding and casting loose her merlin, though without intention, in the act, and crying, gayly, "Well run, brave Hercules! well leaped, brave Hart o' Grease;" and, as she saw the hunters scattered over the wide field, none so near to the sport as she, she flung her arm aloft, and with her pretty girlish voice set up a musical whoop of defiance. Now, at the very moment when the deer's escape seemed almost more than certain--as often is the case in human affairs, no less than cervine--"a new foe in the field" changed the whole aspect of the case. The great brindled gray deerhound, which had lain thus far peaceful by Kenric's side, seeing what had passed, sprang out of the fern, unbidden, swam across the Idle in a dozen strokes, and once more headed the hunted deer.