"I'm glad I'm not," said I, "for I wouldn't want my head broken. But
what troubles me is, that I'm afraid that deer has broken his legs or
hurt himself some way, for I never saw anything drop on rocks in such a
reckless manner, and the poor thing so tired."
The man swore again, and said something about wishing somebody else's
legs had been broken; and then he shouted to the man on horseback to
call off the dogs, which was of no use, for he was doing it already.
Then he turned on me again.
"You are an American," he shouted. "I might have known that. No English
woman would ever have done such a beastly thing as that."
"You're mistaken there," I said; "there isn't a true English woman that
lives who would not have done the same thing. Your mother - "
"Confound my mother!" yelled the man.
"All right," said I; "that's all in your family and none of my
business." Then he went off raging to where he had left his horse by a
gatepost.
The other man, who was a good deal younger and more friendly, came up
to me and said he wouldn't like to be in my boots, for I had spoiled a
pretty piece of sport; and then he went on and told me that it had been
a bad hunt, for instead of starting only one stag, three or four of
them had been started, and they had had a bad time, for the hounds and
the hunters had been mixed up in a nasty way. And at last, when the
master of the hounds and most every one else had gone off over Dunkery
Hill, and he didn't know whether they was after two stags or one, he
and his mate, who was both whippers-in, had gone to turn part of the
pack that had broken away, and had found that these dogs was after
another stag, and so before they knew it they was in a hunt of their
own, and they would have killed that stag if it had not been for me;
and he said it was hard on his mate, for he knew he had it in mind that
he was going to kill the only stag of the day.
He went on to say, that as for himself he wasn't so sorry, for this was
Sir Skiddery Henchball's land, and when a stag was killed it belonged
to the man whose land it died on. He told me that the master of the
hunt gets the head and the antlers, and the huntsman some other part,
which I forget, but the owner of the land, no matter whether he's in
the hunt or not, gets the body of the stag. "There's a cottage not a
mile down this lane," said he, "with its thatch torn off, and my sister
and her children live there, and Sir Skiddery turned them out on
account of the rent, and so I'm glad the old skinflint didn't get the
venison." And then he went off, being called by the other man.
