where Mooween grabbed him. The rest was a plain trail of
crushed moss and bent grass and stained leaves, and a tuft of soft hair
here and there on the jagged ends of knots in the old windfalls. So the
trail hurried up the hill into a wild, rough country where it was of no
use to follow.

As I climbed the last ridge on my way back to the lake, I heard
rustlings in the underbrush, and then the unmistakable crack of a twig
under a deer's foot. The mother had winded me; she was now following
and circling down wind to find out whether her lost fawn were with me.
As yet she knew not what had happened. The bear had frightened her into
extra care of the one fawn of whom she was sure. The other had simply
vanished into the silence and mystery of the great woods.

Where the path turned downward, in sight of the lake, I saw her for a
moment plainly, standing half hid in the underbrush, looking intently at
my old canoe. She saw me at the same instant and bounded away,
quartering up the hill in my direction. Near a thicket of evergreen that
I had just passed, she sounded her hoarse _K-a-a-h, k-a-a-h!_ and threw
up her flag. There was a rush within the thicket; a sharp _K-a-a-h!_
answered hers. Then the second fawn burst out of the cover where she had
hidden him, and darted along the ridge after her, jumping like a big red
fox from rock to rock, rising like a hawk over the windfalls, hitting
her tracks wherever he could, and keeping his little nose hard down to
his one needful lesson of following the white flag.

[Illustration]

ISMAQUES, THE FISHHAWK

[Illustration]

_Whit, whit, ch'wee? Whit, whit, whit, ch'weeeeee!_ over my head went
the shrill whistling, the hunting cry of Ismaques. Looking up from my
fishing I could see the broad wings sweeping over me, and catch the
bright gleam of his eye as he looked down into my canoe, or behind me at
the cold place among the rocks, to see if I were catching anything.
Then, as he noted the pile of fish,--a blanket of silver on the black
rocks, where I was stowing away chub for bear bait,--he would drop lower
in amazement to see how I did it. When the trout were not rising, and
his keen glance saw no gleam of red and gold in my canoe, he would
circle off with a cheery _K'weee!_ the good-luck call of a brother
fisherman. For there is no envy nor malice nor any uncharitableness in
Ismaques. He lives in harmony with the world, and seems glad when you
land a big one, even though h