ing nervously; a doe's
head appeared, her ears set forward, her eyes glistening. I waved the
handkerchief more erratically. My rifle lay across the stump's roots,
pointing straight at her; but she was not the game I was hunting.
Some more waving and dancing of the bright color, some more nervous
twitchings and rustlings in the evergreens, then a whistle and a rush;
the doe disappeared; the movement ceased; the thicket was silent as the
winter woods behind me.

"They are just inside," I thought, "pawing the snow to get their courage
up to come and see." So the handkerchief danced on--one, two, five
minutes passed in silence; then something made me turn round. There in
plain sight behind me, just this side the fringe of evergreen that
lined the old road, stood my three deer in a row--the big buck on the
right--like three beautiful statues, their ears all forward, their eyes
fixed with intensest curiosity on the man lying at full length in the
snow with the queer red flag above his head.

My first motion broke up the pretty tableau. Before I could reach for my
rifle the deer whirled and vanished like three winks, leaving the heavy
evergreen tips nodding and blinking behind them in a shower of snow.

Tired as I was, I took a last run to see from the trail how it all
happened. The deer had been standing just within the thicket as I
approached. All three had seen the handkerchief; the tracks showed
that they had pawed the snow and moved about nervously. When the leader
whistled they had bounded straightaway down the steep on the other side.
But the farms lay in that direction, so they had skirted the base of
the hill, keeping within the fringe of woods and heading back for their
morning trail, till the red flag caught their eye again, and strong
curiosity had halted them for another look.

Thus the long hunt ended at twilight within sight of the spot where it
began in the gray morning stillness. With marvelous cunning the deer
circled into their old tracks and followed them till night turned them
aside into a thicket. This I discovered at daylight next morning.

That day a change came; first a south wind, then in succession a thaw,
a mist, a rain turning to snow, a cold wind and a bitter frost. Next
day when I entered the woods a brittle crust made silent traveling
impossible, and over the rocks and bare places was a sheet of ice
covered thinly with snow.

I was out all day, less in hope of finding deer than of watching