in his line, secured his cast, and leaned
his rod securely in a forked branch to await more favorable conditions
for his pet pastime. For the present it seemed to him that nothing
could be more delightful and more appropriate to the hour than to lie
under the thick-leaved maple at the top of the bank, and smoke and gaze
out in lotus-eating mood across the enchanted radiance of the water.
Even the Child, usually as restless as the dragonflies themselves or
those exponents of perpetual motion, the brown water skippers, was
lying on his back, quite still, and staring up with round,
contemplative blue eyes through the diaphanous green of the maple
leaves.

Though his eyes were so very wide open, it was that extreme but
ephemeral openness which a child's eyes so frequently assume just
before closing up very tight. In fact, in just about three-eights of a
minute he would have been, in all probability, sound asleep, with a
rose-pink light, sifted through his eyelids, dancing joyously over his
dreams. But at that moment there came a strange cry from up the
sweeping curve of the shore--so strange a cry that the Child sat up
instantly very straight, and demanded, with a gasp, "What's that?"

Uncle Andy did not answer for a moment. Perhaps it was because he was
so busy lighting his pipe, or perhaps he hoped to hear the sound again
before committing himself--for so experienced a woodsman as he was had
good reason to know that most of the creatures of the wild have many
different cries, and sometimes seem to imitate each other in the
strangest fashion. He had not long to wait. The wild voice sounded
again and again, so insistently, so appealingly that the Child became
greatly excited over it. The sound was something between the bleat of
an extraordinary, harsh-voiced kid and the scream of a badly frightened
mirganser, but more penetrating and more strident than either.

"Oh, it's frightened, Uncle Andy!" exclaimed the Child. "What do you
think it is? What does it want? Let's go and see if we can't help it!"

The pipe was drawing all right now, because Uncle Andy had made up his
mind.

"It's nothing but a young fawn--a baby deer," he answered. "Evidently
it has got lost, and it's crying for its mother. With a voice like
that it ought to make her hear if she's anywhere alive--if a bear has
not jumped on her and broken her neck for her. Ah! there she comes,"
he added, as the agitated bellowing of a doe sounded from f