So we had lad in charge that the steamer had broken down and could not come to the usual place. to make the best of it and row all the way in the small boat. It was blowing pretty fresh, but not really hard, and the direction was favourable. But alas! the oars were old and only suited for paddling from the launch to the shore. One of them broke in two before we had been five minutes on board, and we were left drifting about at the wrong end of our lake. After much difficulty we succeeded in paddling across to the other side, using one oar and the seat of the boat, there being no road on the side on which we embarked. I then started on a ten-mile walk, on a roughish track, in a pitch-dark night, through thick woods the whole way. Tired as I was, it was with a sense of no small relief that on reaching a keeper's house, within three miles of home, I got hold of an old pony and still older saddle, and, having mounted, thought to reach the Castle comfortably if not triumphantly. Vanity of vanities! Scarce half a mile of the remainder of the journey was accomplished when my pony shied at a sheep that started from the roadside, swerved, and down I came saddle and all. The girths had given way! My back was so bruised that I could not remount, though I had little inclination for that mode of progression M after such an experience, so I limped as best I could for the remainder of the distance, and reached home at midnight. A few days after this chapter of accidents I happened to read an account of some anti-deer forest meeting, when deer-stalking was described as being at the present day an effeminate kind of sport ; no exertion was required, no adventures were to be met with; it was altogether different from what it used to be, and consisted in sitting in an armchair and having half-tame deer driven past. I wished the gentleman who made those remarks had been seated on my old white pony, when the sheep started him, instead of myself. After such a day he would have found mother earth a very uncomfortable armchair. I hardly like to close this chapter without giving a few hints and suggestions on the actual shooting of deer, though it should be clearly understood that they are entirely the results of my own experience, that it is not intended to dogmatise or lay down absolute rules which must necessarily be followed, and that the remarks which are here made must be taken for what they are worth, and no more. Often have I known a man come from the hill with a woe-begone countenance and the admission that he had missed two good chances. 'And yet,' he would add, 'I tried a shot before starting, and hit a bottle at a hundred yards.' That is just it. Shooting at a bottle is very different from shooting If everyone who can hit a mark even a square at a hundred yards was equally successful at deer there would be no missing in the forest, for those who could not accomplish that feat would probably not attempt stalking. at a stag. foot Coolness is the great desideratum in firing at a stag. This quality is generally supposed to be acquired by practice. It is not always so. I have known men, who never were and never will be even fair shots, and who are so fond of the sport that they go on year after year with very varying success. On the other hand, two of the steadiest shots that ever came to this forest were men who began to stalk comparatively late in life, and who never got any practice at deer in other places. For my own part, I am no believer in practising with a rifle at a mark after your weapon has been well tried. It may do no harm, but it certainly does no good. If coolness is the quality most required, what can the young shooter learn by blazing away at a bottle? We have all heard of stag fever, but who |