irst learn to follow the flag.

After that second discovery I used to go in the afternoon to a point on
the lake nearest the fawns' hiding place, and wait in my canoe for the
mother to come out and show me where she had left her little ones. As
they grew, and the drain upon her increased from their feeding, she
seemed always half starved. Waiting in my canoe I would hear the crackle
of brush, as she trotted straight down to the lake almost heedlessly,
and see her plunge through the fringe of bushes that bordered the water.
With scarcely a look or a sniff to be sure the coast was clear, she
would jump for the lily pads. Sometimes the canoe was in plain sight;
but she gave no heed as she tore up the juicy buds and stems, and
swallowed them with the appetite of a famished wolf. Then I would paddle
away and, taking my direction from her trail as she came, hunt
diligently for the fawns until I found them.

This last happened only two or three times. The little ones were already
wild; they had forgotten all about our first meeting, and when I showed
myself, or cracked a twig too near them, they would promptly bolt into
the brush. One always ran straight away, his white flag flying to show
that he remembered his lesson; the other went off zigzag, stopping at
every angle of his run to look back and question me with his eyes and
ears.

There was only one way in which such disobedience could end. I saw it
plainly enough one afternoon, when, had I been one of the fierce
prowlers of the wilderness, the little fellow's history would have
stopped short under the paw of Upweekis, the shadowy lynx of the burned
lands. It was late afternoon when I came over a ridge, following a deer
path on my way to the lake, and looked down into a long narrow valley
filled with berry bushes, and with a few fire-blasted trees standing
here and there to point out the perfect loneliness and desolation of the
place.

Just below me a deer was feeding hungrily, only her hind quarters
showing out of the underbrush. I watched her awhile, then dropped on all
fours and began to creep towards her, to see how near I could get and
what new trait I might discover. But at the first motion (I had stood at
first like an old stump on the ridge) a fawn that had evidently been
watching me all the time from his hiding sprang into sight with a sharp
whistle of warning. The doe threw up her head, looking straight at me as
if she had understood more from the signal than