On the contrary, each had his quiet tale to relate, now perhaps at
the expense of a luckless companion, and sometimes in order that no part
of his own individual skill, as a hunter, should be unknown. The delay was
accounted for, as similar delays are commonly explained, by distance and
the temptations of an unusually successful chase. As the appetites of
those who had passed the day in the exciting toil were keen and the viands
tempting, the first half-hour passed quickly, as all such half-hours are
wont to pass, in garrulous recitals of personal exploits, and of the
hairbreadth escapes of deer, which, had fortune not been fickle, should
have now been present as trophies of the skill of the hand by which they
fell. It was only after personal vanity was sufficiently appeased, and
when the hunger even of a border-man could achieve no more, that the
hunters began to look about them with a diminished excitement, and to
discuss the events of the day with a fitting calmness, and with a
discretion more suited to their ordinary self-command.
"We lost the sound of thy conch, wandering Dudley, as we fell into the
deep hollow of the mountain," said Content, in a pause of the discourse;
"since which time, neither eye nor ear of any has had trace of thy
movements, until we met thee at the postern, stationed like a looker-out
on his watch.
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