they cried, "and she did this, and this was the
way she went!" At that the hunter drew his hand over his brow. "Ah," he
said, "I seemed then almost to see the white doe."

Little peace had he from that day. Whenever his wife was not there he
would call the little ones to him, and cry, "Show me the white doe and
what she did." And the children would leap and spring this way and that
over the little stream before the door, crying, "She was like this, and
she did this, and this was the way she went!"

The huntsman loved his wife and children with a deep affection, yet
he began to have a dread that there was something hidden from his eyes
which he wished yet feared to know. "Tell me," he cried one day, half
in wrath, when the fever of the white doe burned more than ever in his
blood, "tell me where the white doe lives, and why she comes, and when
next. For this time I must see her, or I shall die of the longing that
has hold of me!" Then, when his wife would give no answer, he seized his
bow and arrows and rushed out into the forest, which for a whole year
had not known him, slaying all the red deer he could find.

Many he slew in his passion, but he brought none of them home, for
before the end a strange discovery came to him, and he stood amazed,
dropping the haunch which he had cut from his last victim. "It is a
whole year," he said to himself, "that I have not tasted meat; I, a
hunter, who love only the meat that I kill!"

Returning home late, he found his wife troubling her heart over his long
absence. "Where have you been?" she asked him, and the question inflamed
him into a fresh passion.

"I have been out hunting for the white doe," he cried; "and she carries
a spot in her side where some day my arrow must enter. If I do not find
her I shall die!"

His wife looked at him long and sorrowfully; then she said: "On your
life and soul be it, and on mine also, that your anger makes me tell
what I would have kept hidden. It is to-night that she comes. Now it
remains for you to remember your word once given to me!"

"Give it back to me!" he cried; "it is my fate to finish the quest of
the white doe."

"If I give it," said she, "your happiness goes with it, and mine, and
that of our children."

"Give it back to me!" he said again; "I cannot live unless I may master
the white doe! If she will come tame to my hand, no harm shall happen to
her."

And when she denied him again, he gave her his bow and arrows, and ba