yearling with his
mother; for there he knew that they would be undisturbed and alone,
which is a thing that newly-married couples particularly enjoy. And I
may tell you that if ever you hear of a stag and hind that have
strayed far away from their fellows to distant coverts, you may be
quite sure that they are just such another young couple as this of our
story.

Of course he took her everywhere and showed her everything in the
valley, explaining to her exactly how he had baffled the hounds there
a few weeks before. And he tried hard to find the Salmon who had
helped him so kindly, but he could not light upon him anywhere, nor
find any one who knew where he was gone. The Wild-Ducks were gone to
other feeding-grounds, and the only people whom he could think of who
might have known were a pair of Herons that roosted in the valley; but
they were so dreadfully shy that he never could get within speaking
distance of them. Once he watched one of them standing on the
river-bank as still as a post for a whole hour together, till all of
a sudden his long beak shot down into the water, picked up a little
wriggling trout, and stowed it away in two seconds. Then our Stag (for
so we must call him now) making sure that he would be affable after
meals, as people generally are, trotted down at once to talk to him.
But the Heron was so much startled that he actually dropped the trout
from his beak, mumbled out that he was in a dreadful hurry, and flew
away.

But, after they had lived in the valley a month or more, there came a
bitter hard frost, and to their joy the Wild-Ducks came back to the
river saying that their favourite feeding-ground was frozen up. The
best chance of finding the Salmon, they said, was to follow the water
upward as far as they could go. So up the two Deer went till the
stream became so small that they could not imagine how so big a fish
could keep afloat in it, but at last catching sight of what seemed to
be two long black bars in the water they went closer to see what these
might be. And there sure enough was the Salmon with another Fish
beside him, but he was as different from his former self as a stag in
October is from a stag in August. The bright silver coat was gone and
had given place to a suit of dirty rusty red; his sides, so deep and
full in the summer, were narrow and shrunken; and indeed the biggest
part of him was his head, which ended in a great curved beak, not
light and fine as they had seen it