Yessney was just on the outskirts of the Devon-and-
Somerset country, and the hunted deer sometimes came that way.
Sylvia could presently see a dark body, breasting hill after hill,
and sinking again and again out of sight as he crossed the combes,
while behind him steadily swelled that relentless chorus, and she
grew tense with the excited sympathy that one feels for any hunted
thing in whose capture one is not directly interested. And at
last he broke through the outermost line of oak scrub and fern and
stood panting in the open, a fat September stag carrying a well-
furnished head. His obvious course was to drop down to the brown
pools of Undercombe, and thence make his way towards the red
deer's favoured sanctuary, the sea. To Sylvia's surprise,
however, he turned his head to the upland slope and came lumbering
resolutely onward over the heather. "It will be dreadful," she
thought, "the hounds will pull him down under my very eyes." But
the music of the pack seemed to have died away for a moment, and
in its place she heard again that wild piping, which rose now on
this side, now on that, as though urging the failing stag to a
final effort.
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