had been.

When he had gone I kicked the hedge to pieces quickly, cut the
twitch-ups at the butts and threw them with their wire nooses far
into the thickets, and posted a warning in a cleft stick on the
site of the last gibbet. Then I followed Wally to a second and
third line of snares, which were treated in the same rough way,
and watched him with curiously mingled feelings of detestation
and amusement as he sneaked down the dense hillside with tread
light as Leatherstocking, the old gun over his shoulder, his
pockets bulging enormously, and a string of hanged rabbits
swinging to and fro on his gun barrel, as if in death they had
caught the dizzy motion and could not quit it while the woods
they had loved and lived in threw their long sad shadows over
them. So they came to the meadow, into which they had so often
come limping down to play or feed among the twilight shadows,
and crossed it for the last time on Wally's gun barrel,
swinging, swinging.

The leaves were falling thickly now; they formed a dry, hard
carpet over which it was impossible to follow game accurately,
and they rustled a sharp warning underfoot if but a wood mouse
ran over them. It was of little use to still-hunt the wary old
buck till the rains should soften the carpet, or a snowfall make
tracking like boys' play. But I tried it once more; found the
quarry on a ridge deep in the woods, and followed--more by
good-luck than by good management--till, late in the afternoon, I
saw the buck with two smaller deer standing far away on a half-
cleared hillside, quietly watching a wide stretch of country
below. Beyond them the ridge narrowed gradually to a long neck,