as they played he
seemed to see the white doe leaping before him in the sunlight.

That night the hunter lay sleepless on his bed, wishing for the world
to end; but in the crib by his side the two children lay in a sound
slumber. Then he saw plainly in the moonlight the white doe, with a red
mark in her side, standing still by the doorway. Soon she went to where
the young ones were lying, and, as she touched the coverlet softly with
her right fore-foot, all at once two young fawns rose up from the ground
and sprang away into the open, following where the white doe beckoned
them.

Nor did they ever return. For the rest of his life the huntsman stayed
where they left him, a sorrowful and lonely man. In the grave where lay
the woman's form he had slain he buried his bow and arrows far from the
sight of the sun or the reach of his own hand; and coming to the place
night by night, he would watch the mists and the moonrise, and cry,
"White doe, white doe, will you not some day forgive me?" and did not
know that she had forgiven him when, before she died, she kissed his two
hands and made him sleep for the last time with his head on her knee.

THE GENTLE COCKATRICE

Far above the terraces of vine, where the goat pastures ended and the
rocks began, the eye could take a clear view over the whole plain. From
that point the world below spread itself out like a green map, and
the only walls one could see were the white flanks and tower of the
cathedral rising up from the grey roofs of the city; as for the streets,
they seemed to be but narrow foot-tracks, on which people appeared like
ants walking.

This was the view of the town which Beppo, the son of the common
hangman, loved best. It was little pleasure to him to be down there,
where all the other lads drove him from their play: for the hang-man had
had too much to do with the fathers and brothers of some of them, and
his son was not popular. When there was a hanging they would rush off to
the public square to see it; afterwards they made it their sport to play
at hanging Beppo, if by chance they could catch him; and that play had a
way at times of coming uncomfortably near to reality.

Beppo did not himself go to the square when his father's trade was on;
the near view did not please him. Perched on the rocky hillside, he
would look down upon a gathering of black specks, where two others stood
detached upon a space in their midst, and would know that there his
fath