ke burning rainbows kindled by the
firelight. Far behind him the mother's cry ran back and forth along the
hillside. Suddenly it changed; a danger note leaped into it; and again I
heard the call to follow and the crash of brush as she leaped away. I
remembered the lynx and the sad little history written on the log above.
As the quickest way of saving the foolish youngster, I kicked my fire
to pieces and walked out towards him. Then, as the wonder vanished in
darkness and the scent of the man poured up to him on the lake's breath,
the little fellow bounded away--alas! straight up the deer path, at
right angles to the course his mother had taken a moment before.

Five minutes later I heard the mother calling a strange note in the
direction he had taken, and went up the deer path very quietly to
investigate. At the top of the ridge, where the path dropped away into a
dark narrow valley with dense underbrush on either side, I heard the
fawn answering her, below me among the big trees, and knew instantly
that something had happened. He called continuously, a plaintive cry of
distress, in the black darkness of the spruces. The mother ran around
him in a great circle, calling him to come; while he lay helpless in the
same spot, telling her he could not, and that she must come to him. So
the cries went back and forth in the listening night,--_Hoo-wuh_, "come
here." _Bla-a-a, blr-r-t,_ "I can't; come here." _Ka-a-a-h, ka-a-a-h!_
"danger, follow!"--and then the crash of brush as she rushed away
followed by the second fawn, whom she must save, though she abandoned
the heedless one to prowlers of the night.

It was clear enough what had happened. The cries of the wilderness all
have their meaning, if one but knows how to interpret them. Running
through the dark woods his untrained feet had missed their landing, and
he lay now under some rough windfall, with a broken leg to remind him of
the lesson he had neglected so long.

I was stealing along towards him, feeling my way among the trees in the
darkness, stopping every moment to listen to his cry to guide me, when a
heavy rustle came creeping down the hill and passed close before me.
Something, perhaps, in the sound--a heavy, though almost noiseless
onward push which only one creature in the woods can possibly
make--something, perhaps, in a faint new odor in the moist air told me
instantly that keener ears than mine had heard the cry; that Mooween the
bear had left his blueberry