"Bang!" came the full and round report of A---'s large shotgun, fired
before the beast was fifteen yards away from him. He had aimed at the
head, as he was forced to do, lest he should spoil the haunches, for he
was running now directly from him--and had the buck been fifty paces off
he would have killed him dead, lodging his whole charge, or the best
part of it, in the junction of the neck and skull--but as it was, the
cartridge--the green cartridge--had not yet spread at all; nor had one
buckshot left the case! Whistling like a single ball, as it passed
Harry's front eight or nine yards off, it drove, as his quick eye
discovered, clean through the stag's right ear, almost dissevering it,
and making the animal bound six feet off the green sward.
Just as he touched the earth again, alighting from his mighty spring,
with an aim sure and steady, and a cool practiced finger, the marksman
drew his trigger, and, quick, as light, the piece--well loaded, as its
dry crack announced--discharged its ponderous missile! But, bad luck on
it, even at that very instant, just in the point of time wherein the
charge was ignited, eighteen or twenty quail, flushed by the hubbub of
the hounds, rose with a loud and startling whirr, on every side of the
gray horse, under his belly and about his ears, so close as almost to
brush him with their wings--he bolted and reared up--yet even at that
disadvantage the practiced rifleman missed not his aim entirely, though
he erred somewhat, and the wound in consequence was not quite deadly.
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