he wasn't to be seen. Lightfoot wondered if she had been there,
so looked in the mud at the edge of the Laughing Brook to see if there
were any fresh prints of those dainty feet. Almost at once he discovered
fresh footprints. They were not the prints he was looking for. No, Sir,
they were not the dainty prints he had learned to know so well. They
were prints very near the size of his own big ones, and they had been
made only a short time before.

The finding of those prints was a dreadful shock to Lightfoot. He
understood instantly what they meant. They meant that a second stranger
had come into the Green Forest, one who had antlers like his own.
Jealousy took possession of Lightfoot the Deer; jealousy that filled
his heart with rage.

"He has come here to seek that beautiful stranger I have been hunting
for," thought Lightfoot. "He has come here to try to steal her away from
me. He has no right here in my Green Forest. He belongs back up on the
Great Mountain from which he must have come, for there is no other place
he could have come from. That is where that beautiful stranger must have
come from, too. I want her to stay, but I must drive this fellow out.
I'll make him fight. That's what I'll do; I'll make him fight! I'm not
afraid of him, but I'll make him fear me."

Lightfoot stamped his feet and with his great antlers thrashed the
bushes as if he felt that they were the enemy he sought. Could you have
looked into his great eyes then, you would have found nothing soft and
beautiful about them. They became almost red with anger. Lightfoot
quivered all over with rage. The hair on the back of his neck stood up.
Lightfoot the Deer looked anything but gentle.

After he had vented his spite for a few minutes on the harmless,
helpless bushes, he threw his head high in the air and whistled angrily.
Then he leaped over the Laughing Brook and once more began to search
through the Green Forest. But this time it was not for the beautiful
stranger with the dainty feet. He had no time to think of her now. He
must first find this newcomer and he meant to waste no time in doing
it.

CHAPTER XXXV

LIGHTFOOT IS RECKLESS

In his search for the new stranger who had come to the Green Forest,
Lightfoot the Deer was wholly reckless. He no longer stole like a gray
shadow from thicket to thicket as he had done when searching for the
beautiful stranger with the dainty feet. He bounded along, careless of
how much noise he mad