The hunt was at its height! The noble stag—
which had been harboured on the previous night in
a deep swampy thicket, situate at the extreme
western verge of the chase, and adjoining a wild
tract of semi-cultivated moorland—disdaining to
seek refuge in the recesses of the devious woodland,
had broken covert gallantly, as the first crash
of deep-mouthed music burst from his stanch pursuers;
and clearing by a gigantic effort the rough
park-palings, had taken to the open country, crossing
hill and dale in a line scarce less direct than
the crow's flight, and at a pace that, ere an hour
had passed, reduced the number of those who followed
the now mute and panting hounds from a

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score or two of fearless horsemen to a scant half-dozen
of the boldest and best-mounted riders. The
ladies of the party had long since been thrown out,
scarcely indeed having cantered a half mile along
the nearest road, after the hounds had left the confines
of the park; but still the foremost of the field,
with all the hair-brained courage of a boy, and all
the deep sagacious foresight of a veteran sportsman,
rode old Sir Henry Ardenne; his manly features
flushed with the excitement of his healthful
exercise, and his gray hair floating in the current
of air created by his own swift motion, as, cap in
hand, he cheered the laggards of the pack with a
voice that had lost nothing of its full-toned roundness.
At length, in a sequestered dell, clothed on
each hand with a dense growth of underwood
feathering its rocky and precipitous declivities,
down which a sandy road wound in short toilsome
curves, and watered by a bright and brawling rivulet,
hard pressed and weary, the brave quarry turned
to bay. The deep note of the leading hound
changed to a shrill and savage treble as he viewed
his prey, and at the same instant the loud death-halloo
rang from the exulting lips of the old baronet
as he caught and comprehended the import of
that sharp yell. Another minute brought him to
the brink of a wide pool, embayed between rough
cliffs of sandstone, and overlooked by a gnarled and
leafless oak, on the highest branch of which a
solitary raven sat, unmoved by the fierce clamour,
and expecting, with a sullen croak, its share of the
after-carnage. In the farther corner of this basin,
clear as the virgin crystal in its ordinary state, but
turbid now and lashed to foam by the wild conflict
of the animals, the stag had turned on his pursuers—
nor had he turned in vain; for one, a brindled
bloodhound, the boldest of the pack, unseamed

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from shoulder-blade to brisket by a thrust of the
terrible brow-antler, lay underneath his stamping
hoofs a lifeless carcass; while others bayed at a
distance, reluctant, as it seemed, again to rush
upon an enemy who had already left such painful
evidences of his strength and valour on their gored
and trampled limbs. Nor, though his velvet coat
was clogged and blackened with the dust and
sweat, and though the big tears—tokens of anguish
in its expression wellnigh human—rolled down
his hairy cheeks, did he exhibit aught of craven
terror at the approach of his inveterate pursuers;
but, as the veteran advanced upon him, with the
glittering wood-knife bared and ready, leaving the
dogs, as if beneath his notice, he dashed with a
bold spring against his human persecutor, eye,
hoof, and horn, in perfect concert of quick movement.
The slightest tremour in the huntsman's
nerves, the most trifling slip or stumble, might
have well proved fatal; but, although seventy winters
had shed their snows upon his head, his muscles
had been indurated so by constant exercise in
his beloved field-sports, that many a younger arm
had failed in rivalling their powerful though unelastic
firmness. When the despairing deer made
his last effort, cluding by a rapid turn his formidable
front, Sir Henry struck a full blow as he passed,
completely severing the tendons of the hinder leg—
hamstrung and crippled, the gallant brute plunged
headlong forward, and received in the next instant
the keen point in his gullet—one short gurgling
bleat, and two or three convulsive struggles of the
agile limbs—the full eye glazed, and in a moment
all the fiery energy, the bounding life, that had so
rately animated that beautiful form, was utterly extinct
for ever. Then came the thundering shouts,
and the long cadences of the French horns, their

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joyous notes multiplied by the ringing echoes, and
sent back from every heath-clad knoll or craggy
eminence,—the merry narrative of harmless accidents,—
the self-congratulations of the select and
lucky few, who, from the start to the death, had
kept the hounds in view,—the queries for the absent,—
the praises of some favourite horse or daring
rider,—the stingless raillery,—the honest unfeigned
laughter!

“Who hath seen Ardenne? What chance hath
hindered Edgar?” suddenly inquired one of the
younger of the party.

“Edgar not here!” exclaimed his father, for the
first time discovering his absence; “Edgar not
here! 'Fore George! but he must bide the jest
for this!”

“'Tis strange, Sir Henry—passing strange,
though!” interposed an old gray-headed forester.
“None here can match the master's horsemanship;
and that brown mare hath the pace in her, and the
bottom too. Pray Heaven he be not hurt.”

“I fear he may—I fear he may be hurt,” exclaimed
another. “He was beside me just before
we crossed the northern road. I marked him
charge the Hartley burn right gallantly, and noticed
the mare's stride—nigh thirty feet, I warrant
it.”

In a moment or two the wonder had increased
until it might be called anxiety—excitement—the
more so, as at intervals the laggards of the chase
came straggling in, with mud-stained garb and jaded
horses; yet none brought tidings of the absent
cavalier. At length, sounding their horns from
time to time, they turned their horses' heads toward
home, asking for tidings of their missing
comrade from every traveller or peasant they en
countered. Naught did they learn, however, till

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they had reached the park, when an unlucky groom,
leading his lame and weary hunter by the rein, informed
them that the young master had been accosted,
as he crossed the great north road, by a
passing stranger—a marvellously sour-looking
knave, the servant said, with a cropped pate and
puritanic garb; that he had curbed his horse to listen
to him, and on the receiving of some packet or
despatches, he knew not whether, had ridden slowly
homeward in deep converse with the bearer.

“St. George! and with a puritan!” cried one of
the young Outrams, a hair-brained, light-hearted
cavalier—“a rascally, starved roundhead!”

“He must be strangely altered then, I trow,”
muttered the aged huntsman, who perhaps had
taught him when a boy to ride so well, “an' he be
gone home with a musty beggar—the hounds running
breast high, too, o'er the vale of Bardsey!”

“Tush! tell me not; he is too true an Ardenne,”
cried his father, almost angrily, “that he
should e'er consort with base and brutal fanatics,
Heaven's curse upon them!”

It was true, notwithstanding—the report of the
fallen rider—to its most minute particular of circumstance;
for as he leaped the fence into the
road, and pulled upon his rein to spare his horse's
feet on the rough pavement, a strange-looking man—
gaunt, grim, and tall, with an affected air of
sanctified austerity on his pinched features, wearing
his coarse and foxy hair shorn close to the skin,
and clipped into small peaks alike unseemly and ridiculous,
with a tall steeple-crowned hat, and a sad-coloured
doublet, threadbare and travel-worn, presenting
altogether an appearance as dissimilar as
possible to that of a gentleman—called to him in
a pert shrill voice—

“Canst tell the distance hence to Woodleigh,

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the residence of Ardenne—him men call Sir Henry;
cumbering their tongues with vain distinctions,
titles alike unsavoury and profitless?”

“A brief three miles,” frankly returned the cavalier.
“But you may spare yourself even that
short distance, an' you list. There rides Sir Henry—
he on the chestnut horse! I will o'ertake and
stop him, an' your business may not tarry!”

“Nay, friend,” returned the other, “my call is
not with the old, vain-minded, carnal cavalier, but
with his son—a godly youth, men say—honest and
sanctified! yea, one of the elect—”

“A truce to thine impertinence, sir knave!” Edgar
replied, in a quick angry tone; “a truce to
thine impertinence, an' thou wouldst not receive its
wages; nor deem thy fulsome flattery toward myself
shall anywise excuse thy ribald scoffing at
my father! Begone, sir; tempt me, an' you be
wise, no farther!” and he had already touched his
mare with the spur in order to regain his place beside
the hounds, which had gained on him some
two fields' width during the interruption, when the
puritan reined his hackney short across the path,
crying out in a voice somewhat diminished of its
self-importance, “Nay! no offence!” he said; “for
if thou be'st the man, 'twere worth thy while to
tarry. I am the bearer of a letter! yea, of two
letters, for the good youth, Edgar Ardenne. I pray
thee to relieve me of the charge.”

“Begone, sir! To your duty!” again vociferated
Ardenne, in a tone yet sterner than he had
used before. “Begone to Woodleigh and await
my leisure. When I return, 'twill be, I warrant
me, right soon enough to look to these despatches.
I know not who should write to me by such a low
and scurvy comrade, that I should lose my sport
to minister to his convenience!”

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