For many hours after sunrise, the mountain ridges and passes retained their ordinary appearance of silence and solitude; and the Chiefs, with their followers, amused themselves with various pastimes, in which the joys of the shell, as Ossian has it, were not forgotten.  ’Others apart sat on a hill retired;’ probably as deeply engaged in the discussion of politics and news, as Milton’s spirits in metaphysical disquisition.  At length signals of the approach of the game were descried and heard.  Distant shouts resounded from valley to valley, as the various parties of Highlanders, climbing rocks, struggling through copses, wading brooks, and traversing thickets, approached more and more near to each other, and compelled the astonished deer, with the other wild animals that fled before them, into a narrower circuit.  Every now and then the report of muskets was heard, repeated by a thousand echoes.  The baying of the dogs was soon added to the chorus, which grew ever louder and more loud.  At length the advanced parties of the deer began to show themselves; and as the stragglers came bounding down the pass by two or three at a time, the Chiefs showed their skill by distinguishing the fattest deer, and their dexterity in bringing them down with their guns.  Fergus exhibited remarkable address, and Edward was also so fortunate as to attract the notice and applause of the sportsmen.

But now the main body of the deer appeared at the head of the glen, compelled into a very narrow compass, and presenting such a formidable phalanx, that their antlers appeared at a distance, over the ridge of the steep pass, like a leafless grove.  Their number was very great, and from a desperate stand which they made, with the tallest of the red-deer stags arranged in front, in a sort of battle array, gazing on the group which barred their passage down the glen, the more experienced sportsmen began to augur danger.  The work of destruction, however, now commenced on all sides.  Dogs and hunters were at work, and muskets and fusees resounded from every quarter.  The deer, driven to desperation, made at length a fearful charge right upon the spot where the more distinguished sportsmen had taken their stand.  The word was given in Gaelic to fling themselves upon their faces; but Waverley, on whose English ears the signal was lost, had almost fallen a sacrifice to his ignorance of the ancient language in which it was communicated.  Fergus, observing his danger, sprang up and pulled him with violence to the ground, just as the whole herd broke down upon them.  The tide being absolutely irresistible, and wounds from a stag’s horn highly dangerous, the activity of the Chieftain may be considered, on this occasion, as having saved his guest’s life. [The thrust from the tynes, or branches, of the stag’s horns, was accounted far more dangerous than those of the boar’s tusk:—­

     If thou be hurt with horn of stag, it brings thee to thy bier,
     But barber’s hand shall boar’s hurt heal; thereof have thou no
     fear.]