leaping upon
the mountains, skipping upon the hills." Clear Pond was too far off for
the young mother to go with her fawn for a night's pleasure. It was a
fashionable watering-place at this season among the deer; and the doe
may have remembered, not without uneasiness, the moonlight meetings of
a frivolous society there. But the buck did not come: he was very likely
sleeping under one of the ledges on Tight Nippin. Was he alone? "I
charge you, by the roes and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not
nor awake my love till he please."

The doe was feeding, daintily cropping the tender leaves of the young
shoots, and turning from time to time to regard her offspring. The fawn
had taken his morning meal, and now lay curled up on a bed of moss,
watching contentedly, with his large, soft brown eyes, every movement of
his mother. The great eyes followed her with an alert entreaty; and, if
the mother stepped a pace or two farther away in feeding, the fawn made
a half movement, as if to rise and follow her. You see, she was his
sole dependence in all the world. But he was quickly reassured when she
turned her gaze on him; and if, in alarm, he uttered a plaintive cry,
she bounded to him at once, and, with every demonstration of affection,
licked his mottled skin till it shone again.

It was a pretty picture,--maternal love on the one part, and happy trust
on the other. The doe was a beauty, and would have been so considered
anywhere, as graceful and winning a creature as the sun that day shone
on,--slender limbs, not too heavy flanks, round body, and aristocratic
head, with small ears, and luminous, intelligent, affectionate eyes.
How alert, supple, free, she was! What untaught grace in every movement!
What a charming pose when she lifted her head, and turned it to regard
her child! You would have had a companion picture if you had seen, as I
saw that morning, a baby kicking about among the dry pine-needles on a
ledge above the Au Sable, in the valley below, while its young mother
sat near, with an easel before her, touching in the color of a reluctant
landscape, giving a quick look at the sky and the outline of the Twin
Mountains, and bestowing every third glance upon the laughing boy,--art
in its infancy.

The doe lifted her head a little with a quick motion, and turned her ear
to the south. Had she heard something? Probably it was only the south
wind in the balsams. There was silence all about in the forest. If the
doe