three times, and he liked it so much that he took a
great run and butted her hard, and hurt her, though he had not meant
it. Then she cried, "Maa-a-a! You're very rude and rough. It's a shame
to treat a little hind so; I shan't play any more." Of course they
soon made it up again, but his mother told him to remember that she
was only a little hind. And he remembered it, but he could not help
thinking that it was far better to be a little stag.

CHAPTER III

One day they were lying out in the grass as usual, and our little Calf
was having a great game of romps with the little Hind. The Stag was
not with them, but Aunt Yeld was standing sentry, when all of a sudden
she came back in a great fluster, not at all like a stag, as she was
always trying to be.

"Quick, quick, quick!" she said. "I can wind them and I can see them.
Call your Calves and let us go. Quick, quick!"

Then the two mothers rose up in a terrible fright. "Quick," said Aunt
Yeld again. "Run away as fast as you can!"

"But our Calves can't keep up if we go fast," pleaded the two mothers.

"Bless the Calves, I never thought of that," said Aunt Yeld. "Wait a
minute; look!"

Then they looked down across the rolling waves of grass flecked by the
shadows of the flying clouds, and a mile and a half away they saw a
moving white mass, with a dark figure before it and another dark
figure behind it. The mass stood in deep shadow, for a cloud hung over
it; but the cloud passed away and then the sun flashed down upon it,
and what the Deer saw (for they have far better eyes than you or I)
was this. Twenty-five couples of great solemn hounds trotting soberly
over the heather with a horseman in a white coat at their heads and
another at their sterns, and the coats of hounds and horses shining as
glossy as their own. A fresh puff of wind bore a wave of strange scent
to the nostrils of the Deer, and our little Calf snuffed it and
thought it the most unpleasant that he had ever tasted. "Remember it,
my son," whispered his mother to him, "nasty though it be, and beware
of it."

But Aunt Yeld stood always a little in advance, talking to herself. "I
passed just in front of the place where they are now on my way back
from breakfast this morning," she murmured. "I trust that scent has
failed by this time. Ah!"

And as she spoke some of the hounds swung suddenly with one impulse
towards them, but the horseman behind them galloped forward quick as
thought, and t