as hurrying back to the Great Mountain, all Lightfoot's
anger melted away. In its place was a great longing to find Miss
Daintyfoot. His great eyes became once more soft and beautiful.
In them was a look of wistfulness. Lightfoot walked down to the edge
of the water and drank, for he was very, very thirsty. Then he
turned, intending to take up once more his search for beautiful Miss
Daintyfoot.

When he turned he faced the thicket in which Miss Daintyfoot was
hiding. His keen eyes caught a little movement of the branches. A
beautiful head was slowly thrust out, and Lightfoot gazed again
into a pair of soft eyes which he was sure were the most
beautiful eyes in all the Great World. He wondered if she would
disappear and run away as she had the last time he saw her.

He took a step or two forward. The beautiful head was
withdrawn. Lightfoot's heart sank. Then he bounded forward into
that thicket. He more than half expected to find no one there,
but when he entered that thicket he received the most wonderful
surprise in all his life. There stood Miss Daintyfoot, timid,
bashful, but with a look in her eyes which Lightfoot could not
mistake. In that instant Light-foot understood the meaning of
that longing which had kept him hunting for her and of the rage
which had filled him when he had discovered the presence of the
big stranger from the Great Mountain. It was love. Lightfoot knew
that he loved Miss Daintyfoot and, looking into her soft, gentle
eyes, he knew that Miss Daintyfoot loved him.

CHAPTER XL: Happy Days In The Green Forest

These were happy days in the Green Forest. At least, they were
happy for Lightfoot the Deer. They were the happiest days he had
ever known. You see, he had won beautiful, slender, young Miss
Daintyfoot, and now she was no longer Miss Daintyfoot but
Mrs. Lightfoot. Lightfoot was sure that there was no one anywhere
so beautiful as she, and Mrs. Lightfoot knew that there was no
one so handsome and brave as he.

Wherever Lightfoot went, Mrs. Lightfoot went. He showed her all
his favorite hiding-places. He led her to his favorite
eating-places. She did not tell him that she was already
acquainted with every one of them, that she knew the Green Forest
quite as well as he did. If he had stopped to think how day after
day she had managed to keep out of his sight while he hunted for
her, he would have realized that there was little he could show
her which she did