This was very well, and
very well it would be to add a description of the stag at bay; but as I
never happened to see a stag at bay, I omit all that. Dick had achieved
success, but his clothes were on one side of a roaring river in spate,
and he and the dead stag were on the other. There was no chance of
fording the stream, and there was then no bridge. He did not care to
swim back, for the excitement was out of him. He was trembling with
cold, and afraid of cramp. "A mother-naked man," in a wilderness, with a
flood between him and his raiment, was in a pitiable position. It did
not occur to him to flay the stag, and dress in the hide, and, indeed, he
would have been frozen before he could have accomplished that task. So
he reconnoitred.
There was nobody within sight but one girl, who was herding cows. Now
for a naked man, with a knife, and bedabbled with blood, to address a
young woman on a lonely moor is a delicate business. The chances were
that the girl would flee like a startled fawn, and leave Dick to walk,
just as he was, to the nearest farmhouse, about a mile away. However,
Dick had to risk it; he lay down so that only his face appeared above the
bank, and he shouted to the maiden. When he had caught her attention he
briefly explained the unusual situation. Then the young woman behaved
like a trump, or like a Highland Nausicaa, for students of the "Odyssey"
will remember how Odysseus, simply clad in a leafy bough of a tree, made
supplication to the sea-king's daughter, and how she befriended him.
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