They were glad to get on to the heather again, and to hear the breeze
singing over the moor, and still more glad when they caught the wind
of deer and found Aunt Yeld and Ruddy among them. And Lady Ruddy had
kept her promise to her little Hind and had given her a little Stag
for a brother, a fine little fellow, who was already beginning to shed
his white spots and grow his brown coat. But almost directly after
they arrived the stags began belling and fighting again, and there was
no peace for nearly a month until they had tired themselves out and
settled down to live quietly for another year.

Then came a week of sharp frost, which made the ground too hard for
the hounds to trouble them; and they really began to think that they
might enjoy a quiet winter. Their winter-friends came flocking back to
them, the Woodcock arriving one bright moonlight night with the whole
of her own family and two or three more families besides. They all
settled down above the cliffs where the springs were kept unfrozen by
the sea, and night after night while the moon lasted the Pricket saw
them grubbing in the soft ground with their long bills, and growing
fatter and fatter. But at length one morning the Sea-gulls came in
screaming from the sea to say that the west wind and the rain were
coming; and that very night the frost vanished. Then came three days
of endless grey clouds and mizzling rain, and then the sun and blue
sky returned; and the Deer moved out of the covert to the open ground
to enjoy St. Martin's summer.

But one day while they were lying in the great grass tufts in the
middle of the wet ground, they were startled by the approach of horses
and hounds; and they leaped to their feet and made off in all haste.
There were but two hounds after them, but for all that the Hind and
the Pricket were never more alarmed, for scent as they knew was good,
and the pace at which those two hounds flew after them was terrible.
They had not run above a quarter of a mile when Aunt Yeld turned off
in one direction, and Ruddy with her Yearling and her Calf in
another; but the hounds let them go where they would, and raced after
our Pricket and his mother as if they had been tied to them. They both
ran their hardest, but they could not shake off those two hounds, and
presently they parted company and fled on, each of them alone. The
Pricket made for the cliffs, dashing across the peat-stream without
daring to wait for a bath; and as he cantered u