Page:They who walk in the wilds, (IA theywhowalkinwil00robe).pdf/97



On the following evening, soon after sunset, Bill came out suddenly upon the bank of a small river, rippling and murmuring over its gravelly shoals. The wide sky was tender with a soft, violet light, and musical with the silver twang of the high-swooping night-hawks, hunting gnats in the quiet air above the tree-tops. Two or three early bats were already zigzagging erratically above the bright water, and the trout were leaping in the smoother reaches of the stream. To Bill this was a most comforting change from the gloom and stillness of the forest. The naked strip between the current and the bank,—now sand, now gravel, now naked, sun-warmed rock—was pleasant to his feet. He sauntered on hopefully downstream, browsing along the bushy edge of the bank as he went, till darkness had fallen and the sky grown thick with stars. Then he settled himself for the night on a patch of warm sand beneath the projecting roots of a half undermined maple, more content than he had been at any time since he had been so rudely dragged from his subservient flock and his old, familiar pasture.

The next morning about sunrise, while the mists were afloat upon the water, Bill rounded a leafy point and came upon a sight which thrilled his lonely heart deliciously. A slim young doe, light