The singular race was kept up for slightly more than a mile, during every fraction of which the fugitive put forth his highest possible effort. Such a terrific strain cannot fail to tell upon the most highly trained animal, and so, despite all he could do, the buck found himself unable to keep up his prodigious tension. He was losing ground, and he could not fail to know that escape was out of the question: he was as much doomed as if surrounded and driven at bay by a dozen hunters and their hounds. He was still running at his highest bent, when he suddenly deviated to the right, and, with shocking violence, plunged squarely against the trunk of a beech, and, falling over on his side, gave a few convulsive struggles and died. Beyond question, the buck, when awake to the fact that there was no hope for him, deliberately committed suicide by breaking his neck.