ce where they had begun their
play. Here was one track; where was the next? He looked all around and
was surprised to see a blank for fifteen feet; and then another blank,
and on farther, another: then the blanks increased to eighteen feet,
then to twenty, then to twenty-five and sometimes thirty feet. Each of
these playful, effortless bounds covered a space of eighteen to thirty
feet.

Gods above! They do not run at all, they fly; and once in a while come
down again to tap the hill-tops with their dainty hoofs.

* * * * *

"I'm glad they got away," said Yan. "They've shown me something to-day
that never man saw before. I know that no one else has ever seen it,
or he would have told of it."

[Illustration]

II

Yet when the morning came the old wolfish instinct was back in his
heart. "I must away to the hills," he said, "take up the trail, and be
a beast of the chase once more; my wits against their wits; my
strength against their strength; and against their speed, my gun."

[Illustration]

Oh! those glorious hills--an endless rolling stretch of sandy dunes,
with lakes and woods and grassy lawns between. Life--life on every
side, and life within, for Yan was young and strong and joyed in
powers complete. "These are the best days of my life," he said, "these
are my golden days." He thought it then, and oh, how well he came to
know it in the after years!

[Illustration]

All day at a long wolf-lope he would go and send the white hare and
the partridge flying from his path, and swing along and scan the
ground for sign and the telltale inscript in the snow, the oldest of
all writing, more thrillful of interest by far than the finest glyph
or scarab that ever Egypt gave to modern day.

But the driving snow was the wild deer's friend, as the driven snow
was his foe, and down it came that day and wiped out every trace.

[Illustration]

The next day and the next still found Yan careering in the hills, but
never a track or sign did he see. And the weeks went by, and many a
rolling mile he ran, and many a bitter day and freezing night he
passed in the snow-clad hills, sometimes on a deer-trail but more
often without; sometimes in the barren hills, and sometimes led by
woodmen's talk to far-off sheltering woods, and once or twice he saw
indeed the buff-white bannerets go floating up the hills. Sometimes
reports came of a great buck that frequented the timber-lands near the