nd a girl born at the same
hour. When they were but a month old, they could run; and to see them
leaping and playing before the door of their home made the huntsman's
heart jump for joy. "They are forest-born, and they come of a hunter's
blood; that is why they run so early, and have such limbs," said he.

"Yes," answered his wife, "that is partly why. When they grow older they
will run so fast--do not mistake them for deer if ever you go hunting."

No sooner had she said the word than the memory of it, which had slept
for a whole year, stirred his blood. The scent of the forest blew up
through the rocky ravine, which he had never repassed since the day
when he entered, and he laid his hands thoughtfully on the weapons he no
longer used.

Such restlessness took hold of him all that day that at night he slept
ill, and, waking, found himself alone with no wife at his side. Gazing
about the room, he saw that the cradle also was empty. "Why," he
wondered, "have they gone out together in the middle of the night?"

Yet he gave it little more thought, and turning over, fell into a
troubled sleep, and dreamed of hunting and of the white doe that he had
seen a year before stooping to drink among the red leaves that covered
the forest pool.

In the morning his wife was by his side, and the little ones lay asleep
upon their crib. "Where were you," he asked, "last night? I woke, and
you were not here."

His wife looked at him tenderly, and sighed. "You should shut your eyes
better," said she. "I went out to see the white doe, and the little ones
came also. Once a year I see her; it is a thing I must not miss."

The beauty of the white doe was like strong drink to his memory: the
beautiful limbs that had leapt so fast and escaped--they alone, of all
the wild life in the world, had conquered him. "Ah!" he cried, "let me
see her, too; let her come tame to mv hand, and I will not hurt her!"

His wife answered: "The heart of the white doe is too wild a thing; she
cannot come tame to the hand of any hunter under heaven. Sleep again,
dear husband, and wake well! For a whole year you have been sufficiently
happy; the white doe would only wound you again in your two hands."

When his wife was not by, the hunter took the two children upon his
knee, and said, "Tell me, what was the white doe like? what did she do?
and what way did she go?"

The children sprang off his knee, and leapt to and fro over the stream.
"She was like this,"