yes, which had
not yet grown quick enough to measure distances and find their mother in
her hiding, were full of strange terror as they questioned mine. Still,
under the alarm, they felt the kindness which the poor mother,
dog-driven and waylaid by guns, had never known. Therefore they stayed,
with a deep wisdom beyond all her cunning, where they knew they were
safe.

I led them slowly back to their hiding place, gave them a last lick at
my hands, and pushed them gently under the hemlock curtain. When they
tried to come out I pushed them back again. "Stay there, and mind your
mother; stay there, and follow your mother," I kept whispering. And to
this day I have a half belief that they understood, not the word but
the feeling behind it; for they grew quiet after a time and looked out
with wide-open, wondering eyes. Then I dodged out of sight, jumped the
fallen log to throw them off the scent should they come out, crossed the
brook, and glided out of sight into the underbrush. Once safely out of
hearing I headed straight for the open, a few yards away, where the
blasted stems of the burned hillside showed faintly through the green of
the big woods, and climbed, and looked, and changed my position, till at
last I could see the fallen tree under whose roots my little innocents
were hiding.

The hoarse danger cry had ceased; the woods were all still again. A
movement in the underbrush, and I saw the doe glide out beyond the brook
and stand looking, listening. She bleated softly; the hemlock curtain
was thrust aside, and the little ones came out. At sight of them she
leaped forward, a great gladness showing eloquently in every line of her
graceful body, rushed up to them, dropped her head and ran her keen nose
over them, ears to tail and down their sides and back again, to be sure
that they were her own little ones and were not harmed. All the while
the fawns nestled close to her, as they had done a moment before to me,
and lifted their heads to touch her sides with their noses, and ask in
their own dumb way what it was all about, and why she had run away.

[Illustration: "THE WHITE FLAG SHOWING LIKE A BEACON LIGHT AS SHE JUMPED
AWAY"]

Then, as the smell of the man came to her from the tainted underbrush,
the absolute necessity of teaching them their neglected second lesson
before another danger should find them swept over her in a flood. She
sprang aside with a great bound, and the hoarse _K-a-a-a-h! k-a-a-a-h!_
crashe