Page:They who walk in the wilds, (IA theywhowalkinwil00robe).pdf/52

 challenges across the night and thrashing the bushes fiercely with their antlers.

One still, crisp night in October, when the lakes lay glassy silver and steel beneath a low primrose-coloured moon, the tall cow wandered down the beach, stretched her head out over the water and gave voice to a long, sonorous call which was unlike anything the calf had ever before heard her utter. It was answered almost at once by a harshly eager voice from the black woods around the outlet. Puzzled and anxious, the calf trotted down and nosed at his mother to attract her attention. To his surprise she brushed him aside with a sweep of her great head, impatiently. Much offended, he drew away. There was something in the air which he did not understand, and so he too stood waiting, like his mother.

Some minutes later the thick bushes on the bank above parted noiselessly, and a trim young bull, with slender antlers only in the third year, stepped down the beach. The cow turned her head to greet him with a guttural murmur of welcome. Before responding, however, the newcomer, with a threatening squeal, lowered his antlers, and chased the indignant calf away some fifty yards up the beach. Then he strode back proudly to the waiting cow, and the two began to make friends, sniffing at and caressing each other with their long, sensitive muzzles.