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[Illustration: "_Wherever they went they were always struggling and
fighting._"]

One dark, stormy night the two deer were stumbling and floundering over
roots and bushes, trying to find their way down to the beach for a
drink. Both of them were pretty well used up; and one was so weak that
he could hardly stand, and could only walk by leaning heavily on the
head and antlers of the other, who supported him because he was obliged
to, and not out of friendliness. They were within a few rods of the
beach when he whose strength was least stepped into a hole and fell, and
his leg-bone snapped like a dry twig. He struggled and tried to rise;
but his story was told, and before morning he was dead. For once our
Buck's instinct of self-preservation had carried him too far. He had
taken all the food for himself, and had starved his enemy; and now he
was bound face to face to a corpse.

Well, we won't talk about that. He stayed there twenty-four hours, and
there would soon have been two dead bucks instead of one if something
had not happened which he did not in the least expect--something which
seemed like a blessed miracle, yet which was really the simplest and
most natural thing in the world. A buck has no fixed time for the
casting of his antlers. It usually occurs during the first half of the
winter, but it has been known to take place as early as November and as
late as April. The second night passed, and as it began to grow light
again our friend lifted himself on his knees and his hind-legs, and
wrestled mightily with his horrible bed-fellow; and suddenly his left
antler came loose from his head. The right one was still fast, but it
was easily disengaged from the tangle of branching horns, and in a
moment he stood erect. The blood was running down his face from the
pedicel where the antler had stood, and he was so weak and dizzy that
his legs could hardly carry him, and so thin and wasted that he seemed
the mere shadow of his former self. But he was free, and that long,
horrible dream was over at last.

He tried to walk toward the lake, but fell before he had taken
half-a-dozen steps; and for an hour he lay still and rested. It was like
a taste of heaven, just to be able to hold his neck straight. The sun
had risen by the time he was ready to try it again, and through the
trees he saw the shimmer and sparkle of the Glimmerglass. He heard the
wind talking to itself in the branches overhead, and the splashing of
the r