sandy beach where they two had so often
walked in that first summer. He evidently had plenty of company, and was
probably enjoying life, for all around were other foot-prints that were
narrow and delicately pointed, as a deer's should be. Some of them, of
course, were his own, left by his three perfect feet; but others were
those of his friends and acquaintances, and it is quite possible that
some of the tiniest and daintiest were made by his children.

That beach is a delightful place for a promenade on a summer night, and
besides the deer-tracks one can sometimes find there the trails of the
waddling porcupines, the broad, heavy print left by a black bear as he
goes shambling by, and the handwriting of many another of the
woods-people. Strange and interesting scenes must often be enacted on
the smooth, hard sand that lies between the woods and the water, and it
is a pity that the show always comes to a sudden close if any would-be
spectators appear, and that we never see anything but the foot-prints of
the performers.

With each recurring hunting season the Buck and the other deer that made
their homes around the Glimmerglass were driven away for a time. A few
stayed, or at least remained as near as they dared; but compared with
summer the neighborhood was almost depopulated. And in his fourth year,
in spite of all his efforts to keep out of harm's way, the Buck came
very near losing his life at the hands of a man who had really learned
how to hunt--not one of the farmers who went ramming about the woods,
shooting at everything in sight, and making noise enough to startle even
the porcupines.

One afternoon, late in the autumn, the judge left his court-room in
Detroit and started for his house. He bought an evening paper as he
boarded the street-car; and, as Fate would have it, the first thing that
met his eye as he unfolded it was the forecast for upper Michigan:
"Colder; slight snow-fall; light northerly winds." The judge folded the
paper again and put it in his pocket, and all the rest of the way home
he was dreaming of things that he had seen before--of the white and
silent woods, of deer-tracks in the inch-deep snow, of the long
still-hunt under dripping branches and gray November skies, of a huge
buck feeding unconcernedly beneath the beech-trees, of nutty venison
steaks broiling on the coals, and, finally, of another pair of antlers
for his dining-room. Court had adjourned for three days, and that night
he t