bushes, but they don’t stay in this neighborhood generally; too many people in the daytime, passing, and deer are nervous, nowadays. They like it best back on the hills where there is more protection.”

As he spoke he turned at right angles from the trail and plunged silently into the undergrowth. The bushes closed about him and it was all Ann could do to follow. Suddenly he stopped.

He did not so much as whisper. Silently he motioned for them to come forward quickly.

They looked to where his finger pointed.

Under a group of pines a few feet away a huge buck deer lay asleep, with the sun through the trees splotching his dark coat and turning it into shimmering velvet. His horns were short and looked like dull leather; Jo told them afterward that was because he had not yet made his full year’s growth.

As the band watched he leaped from the ground, fully awake in the instant that he scented danger.60 He leaped almost as if his feet had not touched the earth and he bounded lightly into a jungle of thorns and scrub oak. And with that one beautiful jump he vanished.

60

“Well, Allan,” Jo turned toward Ben’s wide-eyed face with a laugh. “Why didn’t you shoot him?”

“Shoot him— Try to kill him? I couldn’t kill anything as lovely as that, ever. I want to draw him, paint him, just as he jumped in the sun, with the light on his skin and the green all around. Oh,” he cried excitedly, “do you suppose that father could see a deer so that he could show me how to make a picture that was halfway good?”

“If Mr. Seymour would really like to see one, we can come out some morning at dawn and if we are quiet perhaps we can see a deer as he comes down to drink. It is great fun to lie in the bushes when they don’t know any one is watching; they walk about and drink.”

“We’ll go home and ask him now,” said Ann with determination. “It is just too wonderful, and I know he’ll want to come, perhaps to-morrow.”

“And I want to tell mother about it,” said Helen.

“All right,” agreed Jo. “We’ll follow the river out to the road. That will be easier than going back over those high ledges.”61

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