Stránka:tales 1905.djvu/185

Pokračování textu ze strany 184

Long may he roam and spurn the hilltops with his flying feet and dash the dewdrops from the highest pine-tops as he clears the valley at a bound; long may he live and tempt a hail of harmless lead. But the rattle of repeaters is heard in every valley now; the wise are more and more often propounding that unfathomable riddle, “Where have all the Deer gone?” and when at length the last remainder of the common race is slain, I know too well that this, the immortal, too will die; that though he never can be touched by death, he yet will perish — perish like the last surviving Cambrian bard, not by the hand of man, but by a strange engulfment so complete that not a trace of him will e’er be seen again and but a fading memory of his ever having been.