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.  Even if Dick had been a reader of Homer, which is not probable, there were no trees within convenient reach, and he could not adopt the leafy covering of Odysseus.

“You sit still; if you move an inch before I give you the word, I’ll leave you where you are!” said Miss Mary.  She then cast her plaid over her face, marched up to the bank where Dick was crouching and shivering, dropped her ample plaid over him, and sped away towards the farmhouse.  When she had reached its shelter, and was giving an account of the adventure, Dick set forth, like a primeval Highlander, the covering doing duty both for plaid and kilt.  Clothes of some kind were provided for him at the cottage, a rickety old boat was fetched, and he and his stag were rowed across the river to the place where his clothes lay.

That is all, but if one were a dealer in romance, much play might be made with the future fortunes of the sportsman and the maiden, happy fortunes or unhappy.  In real life, the lassie “drew up with” a shepherd lad, as Miss Jenny Denison has it, married him, and helped to populate the strath.  As for Dick, history tells no more of his adventures, nor is it alleged that he ever again visited the distant valley, or beheld the face of his Highland Nausicaa.

Now, if one were a romancer, this mere anecdote probably would “rest, lovely pearl, in the brain, and slowly mature in the oyster,” till it became a novel.  Properly handled, the incident would make a very agreeable first chapter, with the aid of scenery, botany, climate, and remarks on the manners and customs of the red deer stolen from St. John, or the Stuarts d’Albanie.  Then, probably, one would reflect on the characters of Mary and of