Although the stalker will find the high-level beats best suited to his work, he will be at times obliged to exchange their freedom and glorious air for the close monotony of the lower pine wood, especially for those long sombre stretches of it--half level, half slope--which so often lie between the margin of a lake and a range of towering cliff. Here he will find, as a rule, but little undergrowth or brushwood, but from among the moss-coated boulders many a tall, slender mountain-ash will be found springing up and flourishing wherever it can gain sufficient light and air. Such a place is a favourite resort of elk, who are generally aware of some steep pass among the cliffs by which they can regain the higher ground. Supposing the hunter to have settled to his satisfaction that there are deer in such a stretch of wood; supposing him to have found their fresh signs all over it, the bared wood of the ash-saplings showing white and the edges of the bark still bleeding, he has before him a most difficult task in the stalk. This is best effected by advancing in long zig-zags, working from the edge of the water to the highest point where the signs are visible, and _vice versâ_. This must be done at the slowest possible pace, and with all his senses constantly on the alert. The thickly set stems of the trees will help to conceal him, but they inconsiderately render the same service to the elk. In this way half a mile of ground, taken in a straight line, may perhaps be covered in an hour, and during that time the intense attention must not be, in the slightest degree, relaxed; there must be no hurrying of the cat-like step nor careless planting of the foot, the rifle must be ready and the hand prepared to act on the instant. In this kind of work there is little more physical exertion than in sauntering along Piccadilly, nothing that is productive of muscular fatigue, and yet such is the tension of senses and nerves that, after a long spell of it, I have caught myself yawning with that peculiar tense, rigid yawn which has not the faintest connection with mental boredom, but generally betokens physical exhaustion; and I have seen my hunter--whose responsibility was of course greater than mine--lean and wiry as he is, growing visibly paler and wiping from his brow the dew of anxiety. And then in a moment, when one least expects it, if that can be said of a man who is always expecting it--but the apparent paradox is the strict truth--comes the climax: a glimpse of a huge dark grey mass amongst the dark grey stems of the trees, a momentary sensation of all the columns of all the temples in Egypt having risen to baulk one, and in another second one’s whole soul is concentrated in the effort to find a clear space among that timber labyrinth for the bright bead at the end of the barrels and the ounce of lead which it directs.