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S&H HARRIS

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BEST

CHEAPEST.

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NEAVE'S

DRINK

INFANTS,
CHILDREN,
INVALIDS,
AND THE AGED.

Established
1825.

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FOOD

In Patent Air-tight Tins.

DELICIOUS

MAZAWATTEE TEA

Of leading Grocers Everywhere

Prices:- 1/6, 1/10, 2/ 2/4, 2/10. & 4/- per lb.

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He was dropped, as we reckon, early in the month of June, about the year 1874, probably in some quiet retreat under the oak coppice of Horner Wood, or it may have been in some shady combe full of grass and fern on Brendon Common. Who shall presume, unless by rare chance he may have assisted at the ceremony, to name the day and place of birth of a wild red deer? Yet if the knowledge of the ways of deer be not vain, and all experience of teeth and head and slot be not at fault, our conjecture will not lead us very far from the truth. So

he came into the world, a downyhaired, white-spotted little red-deer calf, with four rather long legs and two rather large ears, and looked about him with two great beautiful eyes, and saw his heritage of Exmoor before him, fold upon fold of grass and heather with the shadows of the clouds coursing over it, bounded on the one hand by the blue sky and on the other by the blue sea. A peaceful, happy world

it must have seemed to him in those early months, singularly full for the moment of heedless young creatures like himself. Now he would see an old vixen with her cubs around her playing merrily, as only fox-cubs can play, and hunting distracted beetles among the stones; now a sober old gray hen, much cumbered with the cares of maternity, watching anxiously over her brood of little poults; now a bloodthirsty old weasel with two No. 430.-VOL. LXXII.

couple of young weasels behind her, all hurrying forward with little short legs and long lithe bodies on the line of some hapless rabbit, and speaking joyfully to the scent as they ran. Sometimes, when walking leisurely among the burning stones on the sunny combe side, his dam would stop and swerve and stamp, and lay back her ears and look fierce, and he would see the old mother viper open her hideous wicked jaws, and the little vipers rush down her throat to their haven of refuge. Nay, even when she took him with her to the brown peat stream the trout-fry dashed away from the shallows before him, and he could watch them scurrying from stone to stone, half in fright and half in play. For all the world was young in those days, and all the young, except the trout, seemed to have a kind mother to look after them.

So passed the long bright midsummer days. The sun came up over Dunkery, and the light flew away on the wings of the morning along the Severn Sea to the Atlantic, and the warm wind sang through the waving grass and the stiff stubborn heather, and made the music of the moor. And the calf grew and waxed stronger and began to see others of his kind, other hinds like his own loving dam, with other calves like unto himself. And with these calves he could play, frisking and gambolling and pretending to fight; nor could he fail to note

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