"Hallo!--I say!--what's that?"
"What's what?"
I followed, with my eyes, the direction in which he was pointing with his outstretched hand. He had stayed his horse, and was raising himself in his stirrups with what seemed to be positive excitement. His interest seemed centred in a flock of sheep which browsed unconcernedly in the meadow on our left. At the first glance I thought that they were sheep, "and nothing more." A moment's inspection, however, disclosed the fact that among them was a creature of another species, a little larger than themselves, but not much, and of a different shape and colour. Like them, it grazed, "the world forgetting," if not "by the world forgot," and seemed to be so very much at its ease, and so entirely at peace with all the world, that some seconds elapsed before ocular demonstration succeeded in convincing me that it might be a relation to the noble animal which a large number of enthusiastic sportsmen were ardently pursuing.
"It is a deer?"
The words came from me in the form of a query. For some reason the inquiry seemed to nettle Philipson. He seemed to think that there could be no possible room for doubt.
"Of course it's a deer. What's more, it's the deer."
"No!"
That did seem to me to be almost inconceivable. How came the creature there? Why did it not betray more symptoms of anxiety? Did it suppose that it was out for a holiday, the programme of which included refreshments by the way? Was it possible that it could already have forgotten its wild flight from the red-hot ardour of the heated chase? What had become of the hounds, and the hunt, and the array of dog-carts, and the excited pedestrian throng? Were we two all that was left of them?
While such questions passed through my brain, for which I in vain sought answers, we sat on our horses on one side of the hedge, while on the other the proud monarch of the woodland cropped the sweet grasses with the humble sheep, for all the world as if he were one of them. Plainly, we were more interested in him than he in us; the close proximity of men caused him no annoyance.
Philipson volunteered an observation.